FROM HAMLET. HORATIO ANNOUNCES THE APPEARANCE OF THE GHOST. Act I. Scene 2. Hamlet, Horatio, Bernardo, Marcellus. Hor. Hail to your Lordship! Ham. I am glad to see you well: Horatio, or do I forget myself? Hor. The same, my Lord, and your poor servant ever. Ham. Sir, my good friend; I'll change that name with you. And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?— Marcellus? Mar. My good lord-, Ham. I am very glad to see you. Good even, Sir.- Hor. A truant disposition, good my lord. Ham. I would not hear your enemy say so; Nor shall you do mine ear that violence, We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.1 I think, it was to see my mother's wedding. Hor. Indeed, my lord, it follow'd hard upon. Ham. Thrift, thrift, Horatio; the funeral baked meats My father, methinks I see my father. My lord?3 Ham. In my mind's eye, Horatio. Where, Hor. I saw him once, he was a goodly king. I shall not look upon his like again. Hor. My lord, I think I saw him yesternight. Hor. My lord, the King your father. Ham. The King my father! Hor. Season your admiration for a while With an attent ear; till I may deliver, 1 He tries to assume the tone of their university companionship. 2 "For direst, most dreadful and dangerous."-Johnson. It seems rather to mean the foe in whose punishment I felt the deepest and most eager interest. 3 This exclamation is very natural in the state of Horatio's mind. FROM HAMLET. Ham. For God's love, let me hear. Hor. Two nights together had these gentlemen, In the dead vast and middle of the night, Appears before them, and, with solemn march, Stand dumb, and speak not to him. This to me And I with them the third night kept the watch: Form of the thing, each word made true and good, But where was this? Ham. Hor. My lord, I did; Itself to motion, like as it would speak: But, even then, the morning cock crew loud; Нат. 'Tis very strange. Hor. As I do live, my honour'd lord, 'tis true; And we did think it writ down in our duty, To let you know of it. Ham. Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me. Then saw you not his face? All. My lord, from head to foot. Ham. Hor. O, yes, my lord; he wore his beaver up. Ham. What, look'd he frowningly? Hor. A countenance more in sorrow than in anger. Ham. Pale, or red? 119 1 Used here passively, not in the common meaning of causing dread: in the same manner, fearful in the Tempest, Act I. Sc. 2. "He's gentle and not fearful;" i e. afraid. By a similar exchange of sense, fear is used actively for terrify: "He shall I but fear the knave."-B. Jonson, Every Man in his Humour. not * But Horatio in the first scene mentions specially the ghost's frown ; So frown'd he once, when, in an angry parle, He smote the sledded Polack on the ice. Hor. Nay, very pale. Hor. Most constantly. Ham. And fix'd his eyes upon you? I would I had been there! Very like, Hor. It would have much amazed you. Very like: Stay'd it long? Hor. While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred. Hor. Not when I saw it. Ham. Hor. It was, as I have seen it in his life, A sable silver'd. Ham. His beard was grizzled? no? I will watch to-night; Perchance, 't will walk again. Hor. I warrant it will. Ham. If it assume my noble father's person, All. Our duty to your honour. I doubt some foul play: would the night were come! Act 1. Scene 3. POLONIUS COUNSELS HIS SON ON HIS DEPARTURE FOR TRAVEL. These few precepts in thy memory Look thou character.1 Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportion'd thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware 1 A similar accentuation of this word often occurs. See Richard III. Act. III. Sc. I. 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 record for rècord (Richard III.); aspèct (Henry V.); revenue (Hamlet); obdùrate (Milton); àngelic, nature, creature, honour.-Chaucer. FROM HAMLET. Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in, Bear it, that the opposer may beware of thee. Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. 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. Act III. Scene 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,-- To sleep! perchance to dream ;-ay, there's the rub; Must give us pause. There's the respect That makes calamity of so long life. For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear, 121 1 "Turmoil."-Warburton. It may mean envelopment, i.e., the body. Shakespeare is abundant in these periphrases; "Model of the barren earth." Richard II. Act III. Sc. 2. "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. ↑ Burdens. " Modern delicacy reads "groan." "Grunt is undoubtedly the true reading, but can scarcely be borne by modern ears."-Johnson. "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 But that the dread of something after death,- And makes us rather bear those ills we have, Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; Act III. Scene 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 your players do, I had as lief2 the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor 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. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated 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-shows, and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'er-doing Termagant; 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 Christians, nor the gait of Christian, Pagan, or man, have so strutted, and bellowed, that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen' had inferior stations only are exposed."-Johnson. Johnson's aristocratic criticism would apply equally to Lear, in which there is a similar remembrance of humble humanity. 1 Boundary (Fr. borner). Streams act so frequently in this capacity, that the word in Scotch (burn) means a rivulet. 2 As willingly.-The word is apparently cognate with libens, Lat. The theatrical "Gods" in Shakespeare's days occupied "the pit," or ground. 4 Compare Burns: "She proved ye were nae journey-wark, John Anderson, my Joe:" and "her prentice hand she tried on man." |