the very nick to-day; in season, at the very point'—R. Bernard's Terence, in English (1598), p. 101, 1607. 65. Gross and scope-whole field of thought taken in at one view. 69. Toils-causes to overlabour. Subject-people. 74. Toward-on hand, about to happen, imminent. See V, ii, 352. 82. This side of our known world. The eastern hemisphere as distinguished from the western, a somewhat anachronistic phrase. 6 83. Compact. Accent on last syllable, as in As You Like It, V, iv, 5. 84. Law and heraldry-for heraldic law. George Puttenham, in the Art of English Poesie, speaks of a manner of speech wherein we seeme to make two of one not thereunto constrained, which therefore we call the figure of Twynnes, the Greeks, Endiadis, thus: "Horses and barbes," for barbed horses; with venim and with darts," for venimous dartes' (1589, p. 147). Compare 'gross and scope,' line 65. 66 90. Cov'nant. This is the reading of the folio 1623; the quarto 1604 reads 'co-mart,' which, as no other instance of the word is known, is understood to signify joint-bargain. 91. Carriage-fair interpretation or inference. Design'd-aforesaid. 92. Young Fortinbras, of unimproved mettle hot and full. Here the wise poet, with admirable preparatory foresight, allows Fortinbras to pass before our imagination in the opening scene, just after the first appearance of the Ghost. He comes still nearer to us in the audience-scene with the king (I, ii, 17), and in the report of Voltimand and Cornelius (II, ii, 68). In IV, iv, he actually enters in person, and announces himself in a few words, as going directly to the performance of his duty; and in V, ii, he reappears, the hero of accomplished duty, to wear the lapsed crown of Denmark. Thus the poet himself rebuts the objection raised by the Rev. Joseph Hunter regarding the introduction of Fortinbras as a new character. These external relations, the old feud resulting in the fresh intrigues in Norway, the diplomatic action between the two sovereignties, and the war with Poland, place the piece in the world-whirl of events, and show us that the tragedy is only a view of a part of the mystery of life. 93. Mettle hot and full. So in the Gentleman's Recreations hawks are spoken of as 'hardy and full of mettle.' 94. Skirts-outlying parts, borderlands. 95. Shark'd-gathered together hastily and stealthily. Scroccare, to shark up or shift for anything, to snap. By a natural metaphor from the indiscriminate voracity of the fish, we use the words shark, to steal, sharker, a thief. Ib. List-muster-roll. Quarto 1603 reads sight. 97. Stomach-adventurousness, courage-Henry V, IV, iii, 35. 100. Compulsative. From the frequentative compulso. This is the reading of the folios; the quartos give compulsatory as if from compulsator. In Hamlet, III, iv, 87, and Othello, III, iii, K 454, we have compulsive from compello, and these words are not elsewhere used by Shakespeare. 104. Romage-rummage, thorough ransack or search, busy and disorderly stir. The term was formerly used among sailors for the complete clearing out of a cargo; making room and the roaming about while doing so. 105-122. These lines are omitted in folio 1623; but they occur in all the quartos except that of 1603. 108. Question of the main cause of stir in regard to. 109. Mote. Matt. vii, 3-5. III. The mightiest Julius Cæsar. See Julius Cæsar, II, iv. Compare also Julius Cæsar, II, ii, 18-24, Plutarch's Cæsar, and Lucan's Pharsalia, by C. Marlow, 1600, i, 507-565. 114. As stars, etc. This passage commentators regard as 'hopelessly mutilated.' It has given rise to many conjectures. Rowe printed: 'Stars shone with trains of fire, dews of blood fell, Boaden thought a line is lost, probably of this kind: '[The heavens too, spoke in silent prodigies,] S. W. Singer thinks we might read: '[And as the earth, so portents fill the sky,] As stars,' etc. Rev. Charles E. Moberly suggests that 'if a line is supposed to be omitted, it would be better to borrow from Julius Casar, II, ii, and read :' "[Fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds,] Perhaps the simplest resolution of the difficulty would be to 115. The moist star-the moon, ruler of the tides. See: 'The chaste beams of the watery moon' -Midsummer Night's Dream, II, i, 162; 'Nine changes of the watery star'-Winter's Tale, I, ii, 1; and Christopher Marlow's Hero and Leander, 1590: 'Nor that night-wandering, pale and watery star'—i, 107. 118. Precurse-precedents and foreshadowings. 119. Harbingers. Macbeth, I, iv, 45. 120. Prologue to the omen coming on-announcer of the fate im pending over the state. That is, the event which happened "Cui pater intactam dederat primisque jugaret, ("To whom her father gave her, virgin-pure, Ominibus, i.e., nuptiis; viz., the event which was the consequence of the omens '-UPTON. 122. Climature. From clima, region. zone or region. Inhabitants of the same 137. Partisan-halbert, a leading-staff; French pertuisane, the piercer. 146. Summons (French semonce, Latin submoneas)—the first word of the legal Latin in which a summons was couched. The Platonists supposed that there were spirits appropriate to earth, air, fire, and water, the four elements. 150. In sea. .... or air. 151. Extravagant-exceeding prescribed bounds. Erring, wander ing. 154. It faded, etc. 'Ghosts, or rather devils, assume an airy, thin, and therefore fluxative body, which by heat is extenuated, and consequently dissipated, but condensed and confined by cold, insomuch as not to be seen by the heatful light of the day; whereupon grew that opinion, how ghosts and other apparitions of terror did wander about only in the night, and vanished with the morning'-George Sandys' Ovid's Metamorphoses, 'Commentary on Book XV' (1632). Compare I, ii, 218-220. 155. 'Gainst—as used here and in II, ii, 489; III, iv, 51; as well as in Romeo and Juliet, IV, i, 113; Midsummer Night's Dream, V, i, 75; Richard II, III, iv, 29, is a preposition of time at the time that. 159. Strike-exert a baleful influence; injure. 160. Takes-seizes so as to make the subject of disease, fascinates and inflicts injury. See: 'And there he blasts the trees, and takes the cattle' --Merry Wives of Windsor, IV, iv, 32. 'Strike her young bones, Ye taking airs, with lameness'-King Lear, II, iv, 166. SCENE II. 4. Brow of woe-mourning brow. See 'brow of youth'—Lear, I, iv, 306. 10. Defeated--marred. See 'defeat thy favour'-Othello, I, iii, 346. II. Auspicious dropping. Compare Aакpubev yeλáoaoa, Iliad, vi, 484, 'smiling tearfully.' 29. Bed-rid-Saxon be-drian, to bewitch or fascinate; but confounded in etymology and meaning with bed and rid, as 'one borne on a bed.' Compare Winter's Tale, IV, iv, 412. 49. Probably this line should be read with is and to transposed, or— 'Than is thy father to the throne of Denmark.' 53. Coronation. In quarto 1603 funeral rites is mentioned as the cause of Laertes' coming, but this has been judiciously altered in the later texts. 58-60. Wrung. consent. Omitted in folio 1623. 62. Take thy fair hour. Like Horace's 'Carpe diem'-Carm., xi, 8. 65. Kin.... kind. Compare W. Rowley's Search for Money, 1602, 'I would he were not so neere us in kindred, then sure he would be neerer in kindnesse '—Percy Soc. Ed., p. 5: 'In kind a father, not in kindlinesse'-Gorbuduc, I, i. 'Traitor to kin and kind, to sire and me'—Ibid., IV, i. "Tumultuous wars Shall kin with kin and kind with kind confound' -Richard II, IV, i, 141. 'More than kin,' related both by blood and marriage; 'kind,' full of good feeling. Hamlet is step-son to Claudius as well as nephew, and so 'a little more than kin,' but he is 'less than kind' not only in affection to the usurper, but in not being his son by kind. 67. Too much i' the sun. It is probable that a quibble is intended between sunne and sonne. There is an old English proverb quoted in Wither's Abuses Stript and Whipt: 'Out of God's blessing into the warm sun;' and referred to in King Lear as 'The common saw; Thou out of heaven's benediction com'st To the warm sun '-II, ii. It there, as well as here, signifies 'forlorn,' with none of the comforts remaining which arise out of the charities of kindred. There is a reference to the phrase in Psalm cxxi, 6. 81. 'Haviour-appearance, bearing. 82. Forms, moods, shows of grief. Some editors read modes; quarto 1604 has shapes. Forms are the customary appearances, moods, the changeful musings of the saddened mind; shows, external trappings, mourning-dress which was frequently spoken of as a 'shape.' . 'My grief lies all within; And those external manners of laments Are merely shadows to the unseen grief There lies the substance-Richard II, IV, i, 294-298. 92. Obsequious—(1) dutiful, (2) funereal. Ib. Persevere. The accent is on the second syllable, as in King John, II, i, 421, and As You Like It, V, ii, 3. 113. Wittenberg is a fortified city, triple-gated, in the province of Saxony in Prussia, situated on a sandy level on the banks of the Elbe. Its university (which has been since 1817 united to that of Halle) was founded and endowed in 1502 by the Elector Frederic the Wise. In 1508 Luther was appointed Professor of Philosophy therein, and it was on the gates of its university church that he, 31st October 1517, fixed the celebrated ninety-five theses which ultimately led to the Reformation. Giordano Bruno, who had lived in England 1583-1586, and been patronised by Sir Philip Sidney, Lord Buckhurst, the Earl of Leicester, and (Fulke Greville) Lord Brooke of Warwick, became Professor of Philosophy in the University of Wittenberg, which he called 'the Athens of Germany;' and it is not improbable, as Benno Tschischwitz, in his Shakespeare-Forschungen, i, 'Hamlet,' 1868, says, that Hamlet owes not a little of its philosophy and its interest to Shakespeare's knowledge of the tenets and his remembrances of the character of that martyr-thinker. In Falkson's Romance of Giordano Bruno, 1846, p. 289, the same idea is întroduced. The special works of Bruno to which Hamlet may be indebted are Il Candelajo, a comedy, 1582; and Degli Eroici Furori, dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney, in which the author teaches the militant mission of the will in man's struggles to attain to a knowledge of truth, beauty, and goodness. 'Wittenberg, the university dear to the Protestant heart of England from its memories of Luther,' and, as the refuge-house for the time of a strange thinker whom he had known, dear to the imagination of Shakespeare himself, is very fittinglydespite the anachronism-referred to as the college in which Hamlet had studied and dwelt. 113, 119, 164, 168. In F. J. Furnivall's Early English Text Society's (1870) re-issue of Andrew Borde's Introduction of Knowledge, we learn that out of Denmarke a man may go into Saxsony. The chefe cyte or town of Saxsony is called Witzeburg [Wittenberg], which is a universitie'-p. 164 (1542). 113. In quarto 1603 the following fine lines, reminding us of Horace's 'animæ dimidium meæ '-Carm., I, iii, 8, occur here: 'Wee hold it most unmeete and unconvenient, |