SCENE II.

The same. A Room of State in the same.

Enter the King, Queen, HAMLET, POLONIUS, LAERTES, VOLTIMAND, CORNELIUS, Lords, and Attendants.

KING. Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death

The memory be green; and that it us befitted5 To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom To be contracted in one brow of woe;

Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature, That we with wisest sorrow think on him, Together with remembrance of ourselves. Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen, The imperial jointress of this warlike state, Have we, as 'twere, with a defeated joy,— With one auspicious, and one dropping eye;"

* — and that it us befitted-] Perhaps our author elliptically wrote

and us befittedi. e. and that it befitted us.

STEEVENS.

With one auspicious, and one dropping eye;] Thus the folio. The quarto, with somewhat less of quaintness:

With an auspicious and a dropping eye.

The same thought, however, occurs in The Winter's Tale: "She had one eye declined for the loss of her husband; another elevated that the oracle was fulfilled."

After all, perhaps, we have here only the ancient proverbial phrase " To cry with one eye and laugh with the other," buckram'd by our author for the service of tragedy. See Ray's Collection, edit. 1768, p. 188. STEEVENS.

Dropping in this line probably means depressed or cast downwards: an interpretation which is strongly supported by the

With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole,-
Taken to wife: nor have we herein barr'd
Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone
With this affair along :-For all, our thanks.
Now follows, that you know, young Fortinbras,-
Holding a weak supposal of our worth;
Or thinking, by our late dear brother's death,
Our state to be disjoint and out of frame,
Colleagued with this dream of his advantage,"
He hath not fail'd to pester us with message,
Importing the surrender of those lands
Lost by his father, with all bands of law,
To our most valiant brother.-So much for him.
Now for ourself, and for this time of meeting.
Thus much the business is: We have here writ
To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras,-
Who, impotent and bed-rid, scarcely hears
Of this his nephew's purpose,-to suppress

passage already quoted from The Winter's Tale. It may, however, signify weeping. "Dropping of the eyes" was a technical expression in our author's time." If the spring be wet with much south wind, the next summer will happen agues and blearness, dropping of the eyes, and pains of the bowels." Hopton's Concordance of Years, 8vo. 1616.

they never saw

Again, in Montaigne's Essaies, 1603: “ any man there with eyes dropping, or crooked and stooping through age." MALONE.

7 Colleagued with this dream of his advantage,] The meaning is,-He goes to war so indiscreetly, and unprepared, that he has no allies to support him but a dream, with which he is colleagued or confederated. WARBURTON.

Mr. Theobald in his Shakspeare Restored, proposed to readcollogued, but in his edition very properly adhered to the ancient copies. MALOne.

This dream of his advantage (as Mr. Mason observes) means only "this imaginary advantage, which Fortinbras hoped to derive from the unsettled state of the kingdom." STEEVENS.

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8

His further gait herein; in that the levies,
The lists, and full proportions, are all made
Out of his subject:-and we here despatch
You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltimand,
For bearers of this greeting to old Norway;
Giving to you no further personal power
To business with the king, more than the scope9
Of these dilated articles' allow.

Farewell; and let your haste commend your duty. COR. VOL. In that, and all things, will we show our duty.

KING. We doubt it nothing; heartily farewell. [Exeunt VOLTIMAND and CORNelius. And now, Laertes, what's the news with you? You told us of some suit; What is't, Laertes? You cannot speak of reason to the Dane, And lose your voice: What would'st thou beg, Laertes,

to suppress

His further gait herein;] Gate or gait is here used in the northern sense, for proceeding, passage; from the A. S. verb gae. A gate for a path, passage, or street, is still current in the north. PERCY.

So, in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, Act V. sc. ii: "Every fairy take his gait." HARRIS.

9

- more than the scope-] More than is comprized in the general design of these articles, which you may explain in a more diffused and dilated style. JOHNSON.

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dilated.

these dilated articles &c.] i. e. the articles when MUSGRAVE.

The poet should have written allows. Many writers fall into this error, when a plural noun immediately precedes the verb; as I have had occasion to observe in a note on a controverted passage in Love's Labour's Lost. So, in Julius Cæsar:

"The posture of your blows are yet unknown." Again, in Cymbeline: " and the approbation of those are

wonderfully to extend him," &c. MALONE.

Surely, all such defects in our author, were merely the errors of illiterate transcribers or printers. STEEVENS.

That shall not be my offer, not thy asking?
The head is not more native to the heart,
The hand more instrumental to the mouth,
Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father.2
What would'st thou have, Laertes?

LAER.

My dread lord, Your leave and favour to return to France; From whence though willingly I came to Denmark,

To show my duty in your coronation;

Yet now, I must confess, that duty done,

My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France, And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon. KING. Have you your father's leave? What says Polonius?

POL. He hath, my lord, [wrung from me my slow leave,3

By laboursome petition; and, at last,
Upon his will I seal'd my hard consent:]
I do beseech you, give him leave to go.

KING. Take thy fair hour, Laertes; time be thine,

The head is not more native to the heart,
The hand more instrumental to the mouth,

The sense

Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father.] seems to be this: The head is not formed to be more useful to the heart, the hand is not more at the service of the mouth, than my power is at your father's service. That is, he may command me to the utmost, he may do what he pleases with my kingly authority. STEevens.

By native to the heart Dr. Johnson understands, "natural and congenial to it, born with it, and co-operating with it."

Formerly the heart was supposed the seat of wisdom; and hence the poet speaks of the close connection between the heart and head. See Vol. XVI. p. 12, n. 7. MALONE.

3

·wrung from me my slow leave,] These words and the two following lines are omitted in the folio. MALONE.

And thy best graces: spend it at thy will.*-
But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son,-
HAM. A little more than kin, and less than kind.5
[Aside.

* Take thy fair hour, Laertes; time be thine, And thy best graces: spend it at thy will.] The sense is,You have my leave to go, Laertes; make the fairest use you please of your time, and spend it at your will with the fairest graces you are master of. THEOBALD.

So, in King Henry VIII:

66 and bear the inventory

❝ Of your best graces in your mind."

STEEVENS.

I rather think this line is in want of emendation. I read : time is thine,

And my best graces: spend it at thy will. JOHNSON.

" Ham. A little more than kin, and less than kind.] Kind is the Teutonick word for child. Hamlet therefore answers with propriety, to the titles of cousin and son, which the king had given him, that he was somewhat more than cousin, and less than son. JOHNSON.

In this line, with which Shakspeare introduces Hamlet, Dr. Johnson has perhaps pointed out a nicer distinction than it can justly boast of. To establish the sense contended for, it should have been proved that kind was ever used by any English writer for child. A little more than kin, is a little more than a common relation. The King was certainly something less than kind, by having betrayed the mother of Hamlet into an indecent and incestuous marriage, and obtained the crown by means which he suspects to be unjustifiable. In the fifth Act, the prince accuses his uncle of having popp'd in between the election and his hopes, which obviates Dr. Warburton's objection to the old reading, viz. that "the king had given no occasion for such a reflection."

A jingle of the same sort is found in Mother Bombie, 1594, and seems to have been proverbial, as I have met with it more than once: "the nearer we are in blood, the further we must be from love; the greater the kindred is, the less the kindness must be."

Again, in Gorboduc, a tragedy, 1561:

"In kinde a father, but not kindelyness."

In the Battle of Alcazar, 1594, Muly Mahomet is called "Traitor to kinne and kinde."

As kind, however, signifies nature, Hamlet may mean that