Ham. If it assume my noble father's person, All. Our duty to your honour. Ham. Your loves, as mine to you. Farewell. [Exeunt. I doubt some foul play. Would the night were come ! 'Till then sit still, my soul. Foul deeds will rise, Tho' all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes.1 ACT I. SC. 3. POLONIUS COUNSELS HIS SON ON HIS DEPARTURE FOR TRAVEL. These few precepts in thy memory See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportioned3 thought his act: Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar; The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Bear't that th' opposer may beware of thee. Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy ; For the apparel oft proclaims the man, And they in France of the best rank and station Are most select and generous chief in that. Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry." 1 The power of this scene can be appreciated properly only in connection with the whole play; extracts from Shakespeare are often merely the single bricks of the edifice. 2 A similar accentuation of this word often occurs. See Richard III. Act. III. Sc. 1. The change of accent in the course of two or three centuries disfigures to our ears much of the harmony of the old poetry; attention to this would mend many of the verses of Chaucer and his successors. Other instances are recòrd for rècord (Richard III.); aspèct (Henry V.); revenue (Hamlet); obdurate (Milton); angelic, nature, creature, honour.-Chaucer, see p. 13. 3 Unmatured, unweighed. "Do not make thy palm callous by shaking every man by the hand." The figurativo meaning may be, "Do not by promiscuous conversation make thy mind insensible to the difference of characters."-Johnson. 5 Economy. This above all-to thine ownself be true; ACT. III. SC. 1. HAMLET'S SOLILOQUY ON DEATH. To be, or not to be ?-that is the question :- And by opposing end them ?—To die ?—to sleep— The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks To sleep?-perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, That patient merit of th' unworthy takes; With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear, And makes us rather bear those ills we have, Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; 1 " Infuse."-Warburton. ? Another reading is siege; sea, although it mixes the metaphor, is much more accordant with the style of Shakespeare's imagery. 3 "Turmoil."-Warburton. It may mean envelopement, i. e. the body. Shakespeare is abundant in these periphrases; "Model of the barren earth." See note 1, p. 107.-"Speculative and active instruments," i. e. eyes and limbs. Othello, Act I. Sc. 3;—“ pickers and stealers," i. e. fingers. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2. 5 Burdens. 4 Consideration. • Modern delicacy reads " groan. "See note 1, p. 101. "Grunt is undoubtedly the true reading, but can scarcely be borne by modern ears."-Johnson. 7" It may be remarked, that Hamlet, in his enumeration of miseries, forgets, whether properly or not, that he is a prince, and mentions many evils to which inferior stations only are exposed."-Johnson. Johnson's aristocratic criticism would possibly condemn Lear for a similar remembrance of humble humanity. Boundary, (Fr. borner). Streams act so frequently in this capacity, that the word in Scotch (burn) means a rivulet. And enterprises of great pith and moment, ACT III. SC. 2. HAMLET'S SPEECH TO THE PLAYERS. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier had spoke my lines. And do not saw the air too much with your hand thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. Oh, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated3 fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings; who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-show and noise: I could have such a fellow whipped for o'er-doing Termagant;5 it out-herods Herod. Pray you avoid it. Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature; for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing; whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as 'twere the mirror up to Nature, to show Virtue her own feature, Scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now, this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. Oh, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christian, nor the gait of Christian, Pagan, or man, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably. FROM OTHELLO. OTHELLO'S ACCOUNT OF HIS COURTSHIP OF DESDEMONA. Most potent, grave, and reverend signiors,8 1 Consult Johnson's beautiful analysis of this celebrated soliloquy. 2 As willingly.-See note 4, p. 52. I had as lief not be."-Jul. Cæs. Act I. Sc. 2.; apparently cognate with libens, Lat. 3 In a stage wig. The theatrical" Gods" in Shakespeare's days occupied "the pit." 5 See note 12, p 31. One of whom. Compare Burns: "She proved ye were nae journey-wark, John Anderson, my Joe :" and "her prentice hand she tried on man." * The Venetian senate, before whom the defence is made. L It is most true; true, I have married her : And little of this great world can I speak, More than pertains to feats of broil and battle; In speaking for myself. Yet, by your gracious patience, Of my whole course of love; what drugs, what charms, For such proceeding I am charg'd withal, I won his daughter with. * Her father lov'd me, oft invited me ; Still question'd me the story of my life, From year to year,-the battles, sieges, fortunes, I ran it through, ev'n from my boyish days To the very moment that he bade me tell it. Wherein I spoke of most disastrous chances, Of moving accidents by flood and field; Of hair-breadth 'scapes in th' imminent deadly breach; And sold to slavery; of my redemption thence, And portance in my travel's history: Wherein of antres3 vast, and deserts idle, Rough quarries, rocks, and hills, whose heads touch heav'n, It was my hint to speak ;-such was the process; And of the Cannibals that each other eat, The Anthropophagi; and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders. All these to hear But still the house affairs would draw her hence, She'd come again, and with a greedy ear 1 Complete. 2 Conduct, behaviour. Johnson reads-sold to slavery, of my redemption thence, And portance in't; my travel's history. Caves. Lat. antrum. 4 Tales of these were common in the books of travels of the time, in Mandeville and Raleigh. 5 Not in a consecutive story. And often did beguile her of her tears, When I did speak of some distressful stroke That my youth suffer'd. My story being done, She swore, "In faith. 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange, 'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful She wish'd she had not heard it ;-yet she wish'd That Heav'n had made her such a man." -She thank'd me, And bade me, if I had a friend that lov'd her, I should but teach him how to tell my story, And that would woo her. On this hint I spake; ACT. V. SC. 2. OTHELLO'S SOLILOQUY BEFOre he murders his wife. Desdemona discovered asleep; enter Othello with a light and a sword. It is the cause,1 it is the cause, my soul; [Lays down the sword. I can again thy former light restore, Should I repent me :-but,-once put out thine, I know not where is that Promethean heat, When I have pluck'd thy rose, I cannot give it vital growth again; [Sets down the taper It needs must wither. I'll smell it on the tree; [Kissing her. Oh balmy breath, that dost almost persuade 1 The abruptness of this commencement, denoting it to be the sudden thinking aloud of a mind in a tumult of horrible emotions, is finely conceived. "It is the cause of what I am about to do, not the action itself, that thus racks my soul." Compare the states of mind represented by Shakespeare in Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 3, see p. 93; and in Brutus, Julius Cæsar, Act II. Sc. 1, Between the acting of," &c. |