1

1

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, Arviragus, 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 piece

meal.

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 suddenly1 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

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 particular: 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.

CHAM. 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.

* [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.] inverted an expression of Pindar, Guias "ovag, the dream of a shadow.

So, Davies:

Shakspeare has accidentally that the state of humanity is JOHNSON.

"Man's life is but a dreame, nay, less than so,
"A shadow of a dreame." FArmer.

So, in the tragedy of Darius, 1603, by Lord Sterline:
"Whose best was but the shadow of a dream.”

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.

5

JOHNSON.

·too dear, a halfpenny.] i. e. a halfpenny too dear: they are worth nothing. The modern editors read-at a halfpenny. MALONE.

Is it your own inclining? Is it a free visitation? Come, come; deal justly with me: come, come; nay, speak.

GUIL. What should we say, my lord?

HAM. Any thing-but to the purpose. You were sent for; and there is a kind of confession in your looks, which your modesties have not craft enough to colour: I know, the good king and queen have sent for you.

Ros. To what end, my lord?

HAM. That you must teach me. But let me conjure you, by the rights of our fellowship, by the consonancy of our youth, by the obligation of our ever-preserved love, and by what more dear a better proposer could charge you withal, be even and direct with me, whether you were sent for, or no? Ros. What say you? [To GUILDENSTERN. HAM. Nay, then I have an eye of you; [Aside.] if you love me, hold not off.

GUIL. My lord, we were sent for.

HAM. I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the king and queen moult no feather. I have of late," (but, wherefore, I know not,) lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises: and, indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition, that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a steril promontory;

Nay, then I have an eye of you;] An eye of you means, I have a glimpse of your meaning. STEEVENS.

7 I have of late, &c.] This is an admirable description of a rooted melancholy sprung from thickness of blood; and artfully imagined to hide the true cause of his disorder from the penetration of these two friends, who were set over him as spies. WARBURTON.