QUEEN. Alack! what noise is this?" Enter a Gentleman. KING. Attend. Where are my Switzers?1 Let them guard the door: What is the matter? GENT. Save yourself, my lord; The ocean, overpeering of his list, 2 Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste, 9 Alack! &c.] This speech of the Queen is omitted in the quartos. STEEVENS. 1 my Switzers?] I have observed in many of our old plays, that the guards attendant on Kings are called Switzers, and that without any regard to the country where the scene lies. Thus, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Noble Gentleman, Act III. sc. i: was it not "Some place of gain, as clerk to the great band The reason is, because the Swiss in the time of our poet, as at present, were hired to fight the battles of other nations. So, in Nashe's Christ's Teares over Jerusalem, 4to. 1594: "Law, logicke, and the Switzers, may be hired to fight for any body." MALONE. * The ocean, overpeering of his list,] The lists are the barriers which the spectators of a tournament must not pass. JOHNSON. See note on Othello, Act IV. sc. i. STEEVENS. List, in this place, only signifies boundary, i. e. the shore. So, in King Henry IV. P. II: "The very list, the very utmost bound The selvage of cloth was in both places, I believe, in our author's thoughts. MALONE. The ratifiers and props of every word,3 QUEEN. How cheerfully on the false trail they cry! O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs. 3 The ratifiers and props of every word,] By word is here meant a declaration, or proposal. It is determined to this sense, by the inference it hath to what had just preceded : "The rabble call him lord," &c. This acclamation, which is the word here spoken of, was made without regard to antiquity, or received custom, whose concurrence, however, is necessarily required to confer validity and stability in every proposal of this kind. HEATH. Sir T. Hanmer would transpose this line and the next. Dr. Warburton proposes to read, ward; and Dr. Johnson, weal, instead of word. I should be rather for reading, work. TYRWHITT. In the first folio there is only a comma at the end of the above line; and will not the passage bear this construction?-The rabble call him lord, and as if the world were now but to begin, and as if the ancient custom of hereditary succession were unknown, they, the ratifiers and props of every word he utters, cry, Let us make choice, that Laertes shall be king. TOLLET. This construction might certainly be admitted, and the ratifiers and props of every word might be understood to be applied to the rabble mentioned in a preceding line, without Sir T. Hanmer's transposition of this and the following line; but there is no authority for what Mr. Tollet adds, "of every word he [Laertes] utters," for the poet has not described Laertes as having uttered a word. If, therefore, the rabble are called the ratifiers and props of every word, we must understand, "of every word uttered by themselves:" which is so tame, that it would be unjust to our poet to suppose that to have been his meaning. Ratifiers, &c. refer not to the people, but to custom and antiquity, which the speaker says are the true ratifiers and props of every word. The last word however of the line may well be suspected to be corrupt; and Mr. Tyrwhitt has probably suggested the true reading. MALONE. 40, this is counter, you false Danish dogs.] Hounds run counter when they trace the trail backwards. JOHNSON. KING. The doors are broke. [Noise within. Enter LAERTES, armed; Danes following. LAER. Where is this king?-Sirs, stand you all without. DAN. No, let's come in. LAER. I pray you, give me leave. DAN. We will, we will. [They retire without the Door. LAER. I thank you:-keep the door. --O thou vile king, Give me my father. QUEEN. Calmly, good Laertes. LAER. That drop of blood that's calm, pro claims me bastard; Cries, cuckold, to my father; brands the harlot Even here, between the chaste unsmirched brow Of my true mother. KING. What is the cause, Laertes, That thy rebellion looks so giant-like ?- 5 5-unsmirched brow,] i. e. clean, not defiled. To besmirch, our author uses, Act I. sc. v. and again in King Henry V. Act IV. sc. iii. This seems to be an allusion to a proverb often introduced in the old comedies. Thus, in The London Prodigal, 1605: “ - as true as the skin between any man's brows." The same phrase is also found in Much Ado about Nothing, Act III. sc. v. VOL. XVIII. STEEVENS. U Why thou art thus incens'd; -Let him go, Ger KING. Let him demand his fill. LAER. How came he dead? I'll not be juggled with: To hell, allegiance! vows, to the blackest devil! KING. Who shall stay you? LAER. My will, not all the world's: And, for my means, I'll husband them so well, They shall go far with little. KING. Good Laertes, If you desire to know the certainty : Of your dear father's death, is't writ in your re That, sweepstake, you will draw both friend and venge, foe, Winner and loser ? LAER. None but his enemies. KING. Will you know them then? LAER. To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms; • That both the worlds I give to negligence, So, in Macbeth: But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer." STEEVENS. And, like the kind life-rend'ring pelican," KING. Why, now you speak Like a good child, and a true gentleman. DANES. [Within.] 9 Let her come in. LAER. How now! what noise is that? 7 life-rend'ring pelican,] So, in the ancient Interlude of Nature, bl. 1. no date: " Who taught the cok hys watche-howres to observe, " And syng of corage wyth shryll throte on hye? "Who taught the pellycan her tender hart to carve ? " For she nolde suffer her byrdys to dye?" Again, in the old play of King Leir, 1605: " I am as kind as is the pelican, "That kils itselfe, to save her young ones lives." It is almost needless to add that this account of the bird is entirely fabulous. STEEVENS. * most sensibly - Thus the quarto, 1604. The folio, following the error of a later quarto, reads-most sensible. 9 MALONE, to your judgment 'pear,] So the quarto. The folio, and all the later editions, read: -to your judgment pierce, less intelligibly. JOHNSON. This elision of the verb to appear, is common to Beaumont and Fletcher. So, in The Maid in the Mill: Again: "They 'pear so handsomely, I will go forward." " And where they 'pear so excellent in little, : |