! To reason most absurd; whose common theme * To reason most abfurd;] Reason is here used in its common sense, for the faculty by which we form conclufions from arguments. JOHNSON. $ And, with no less nobility of love,] Nobility, for magnitude. Nobility is rather generofity. JOHNSON. WARBURTON. By nobility of love, Mr. Heath understands, eminence and diftinction of love. MALONE. So, afterwards, the Ghost, defcribing his affection for the Queen: "To me, whose love was that of dignity" &c. STEEVENS. Do I impart toward you.] I believe impart is, impart myself, communicate whatever I can bestow. JOHNSON. The crown of Denmark was elective. So, in Sir Clyomon Knight of the Golden Shield, &c. 1599: " And me possess for spoused wife, who in election am "To have the crown of Denmark here, as heir unto the fame." The king means, that as Hamlet stands the fairest chance to be next elected, he will strive with as much love to ensure the crown to him, as a father would show in the continuance of heirdom to a fon. STEEVENS. I agree with Mr. Steevens, that the crown of Denmark (as in most of the Gothick kingdoms) was elective, and not hereditary; though it might be customary, in elections, to pay some attention to the royal blood, which by degrees produced hereditary fucceffion. Why then do the rest of the commentators so often treat Claudius as an ufurper, who had deprived young Hamlet of his right by beirship to his father's crown? Hamlet calls him drunkard, murderer, and villain; one who had carried the election by low and mean practices; had Popp'd in between the election and my hopes” VOL. XV. In going back to school in Wittenberg, QUEEN. Let not thy mother lofe her prayers, I pray thee, stay with us, go not to Wittenberg. had " From a shelf the precious diadem stole, but never hints at his being an usurper. His discontent arose from his uncle's being preferred before him, not from any legal right which he pretended to fet up to the crown. Some regard was probably had to the recommendation of the preceding prince, in electing the fucceffor. And therefore young Hamlet had the voice of the king himself for his succession in Denmark;" and he at his own death prophecies that "the election would light on Fortinbras, who had his dying voice," conceiving that by the death of his uncle, he himself had been king for an inftant, and had therefore a right to recommend. When, in the fourth act, the rabble wished to choose Laertes king, I understand that antiquity was forgot, and custom violated, by electing a new king in the life-time of the old one, and perhaps also by the calling in a ftranger to the royal blood. BLACKSTONE. 7 - to school in Wittenberg,] In Shakspeare's time there was an university at Wittenberg, to which he has made Hamlet propose to return. The university of Wittenberg was not founded till 1502, consequently did not exist in the time to which this play is referred. MALONE. Our author may have derived his knowledge of this famous university from The Life of lacke Wilton, 1594, or The History of Doctor Faustus, of whom the second report (printed in the fame year) is faid to be " written by an English gentleman, student in Witten berg, an University of Germany in Saxony." 8 RITSON. bend you to remain-] i. e. fubdue your inclination to go from hence, and remain, &C. STEEVENS. Sits smiling to my heart: in grace whereof, [Exeunt King, Queen, Lords, &c. POLONIUS, HAM. O, that this too too folid flesh would melt, Thaw, and refolve itself into a dew!3 Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-flaughter! O God! O God! * Sits Smiling to my heart:) Thus, the dying Lothario: "That sweet revenge comes smiling to my thoughts." Sits Smiling to my heart:] Surely it should be Sits Smiling on my heart. RITSON. STEEVENS. To my heart, I believe, signifies-near to, clofe, next to, my heart. STEEVENS. No jocund health,] The king's intemperance is very strongly impressed; every thing that happens to him gives him occafion to drink. JOHNSON. 2 -the king's rouse-] i. e. the king's draught of jollity. See Othello, Act II. fc. iii. STEEVENS. So, in Marlowe's Tragical Historie of Doctor Faustus : 3 "He tooke his rouse with stoopes of Rhennish wine." RITSON. - refolve itself into a dew!] Resolve means the same as dissolve. Ben Jonson uses the word in his Volpone, and in the fame sense: "Forth the refolved corners of his eyes." Again, in The Country Girl, 1647: my swoln grief, refolved in these tears." STEEVENS. 4 Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-flaughier!] 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 efpoused by the accurate Mr. Hughes, who gave an edition of this play) is the true reading, i. e. that he had not restrained fuicide by bis express law and peremptory prohibition. THEOBALD. There are yet those who suppose the old reading to be the true How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Fie on't! O fie! 'tis an unweeded garden, That grows to feed; things rank, and gross in na ture, 5 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, one, as they say the word fixed feems to decide very strongly in its favour. I would advise such to recollect Virgil's expreffion: "-fixit leges pretio, atque refixit." STEEVENS. If the true reading wanted any support, it might be found in Cymbeline: "gainst self flaughter "There is a prohibition so divine, "That cravens my weak hand." In Shakspeare's time canon (norma) was commonly spelt cannon. MALONE. 5-merely.] is entirely, abfolutely. See Vol. III. p. 9, n. 5; and Vol. XII. p. 131, n. 6. STEEVENS. 6 So excellent a king; that was, to this, Hyperion to a fatyr:) This fimilitude at first fight seems to be a little far-fetched; but it has an exquifite beauty. By the Satyr is meant Pan, as by Hyperion, Apollo. Pan and Apollo were brothers, and the allufion is to the contention between those gods for the preference in musick. WARBURTON. All our English poets are guilty of the fame 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: "Blow gentle Africus, Shakspeare, I believe, has no allusion in the present inftance, except to the beauty of Apollo, and its immediate oppofite, the deformity of a Satyr. STEEVENS. Hyperion or Apollo is reprefented in all the ancient statues, &c. as exquifitely beautiful, the fatyrs hideoufly ugly.-Shakspeare may furely be pardoned for not attending to the quantity of Latin names, here and in Cymbeline; when we find Henry Parrot, the That he might not beteem the winds of heaven' Vifit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth! author of a collection of epigrams printed in 1613, to which a Latin preface is prefixed, writing thus; Pofthumus, not the last of many more, "Aiks why I write in such an idle vaine," &c. Laquei ridiculofi, or Springes for Woodcocks, 16mo. fign. c. 3. MALONE. 1 That be might not beteem the winds of heaven-] In former editions: That he permitted not the winds of heaven-. This is a fophisticated reading, copied from the players in fome of That he might not beteene the winds of heaven Beteene is a corruption without doubt, but not so inveterate a one, but that, by the change of a fingle letter, and the feparation of two words mistakenly jumbled together, I am verily perfuaded, I have retrieved the poet's reading That he might not let e'en the winds of heaven &c. THEOBALD. The obfolete 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 fatisfied. Beteeme, however, occurs in the tenth book of Arthur Golding's verfion of Ovid's Metamorphofis, 4to. 1587; and, from the correfponding Latin, must necessarily fignify, to vouchsafe, deign, permit, or fuffer: - Yet could he not beteeme "The shape of anie other bird than egle for to feeme. " Sign. R. 1. b. Dignatur, nifi quæ possit fua fulmina ferre." V. 157. Jupiter (though anxious for the poffeffion of Ganymede) would not deign to assume a meaner form, or fuffer change into an humbler shape, than that of the august and vigorous fowl who bears the thunder in his pounces. The existence and fignification of the verb beteem being thus eftablished, it follows, that the attention of Hamlet's father to his queen was exactly such as is described in the Enterlude of the |