Black as his purpose, did the night resemble
When he lay couched in the ominous horse,
Hath now this dread and black complexion smear'd
With heraldry more dismal; head to foot
Now is he total gules;5 horridly trick'd
With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons z
Bak'd and impasted with the parching streets,
That lend a tyrannous and a damned light

To their lord's murder: Roasted in wrath, and fire,
And thus o'er-sized with coagulate gore,

With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
Old grandsire Priam seeks ;—So proceed you.

"Which he disdaining, whiskt his sword about,
"And with the wound thereof the king fell downe :
"Then from the navell to the throat at once,
"He ript old Priam; at whose latter gaspe

Jove's marble statue gan to bend the brow,

"As lothing Pirrhus for this wicked act:
"Yet he undaunted took his fathers flagge,
"And dipt it in the old kings chill cold bloud,
"And then in triumph ran into the streetes,

"Through which he could not passe for slaughtred men :

**"So leaning on his sword he stood stone still,

66

Viewing the fire wherewith rich Ilion burnt." Act II. The exact title of the play from which these lines are copied, is as follows: The-Tragedie of Dido | Queen Played by the Children of her | Majesties Chapel Written by Christopher Marlowe, and Thomas Nash, Gent. Actors Jupiter. Ganimed. | Venus | Cupid. | Juno. | Mercurie, or-Hermes, Eneas. Ascanius. Į Dido. | Anna. Achates. | Ilioneus. | Iarbas. Į Cloanthes. Sergestus. | At London, Printed, by the Widdowe Orwin, for Thomas Woodcocke, and are to be solde at his shop, in Paules Church-yeard, at | the signe of the black Beare. 1594. | Steevens.

5 Now is he total gules;] Gules is a term in the barbarous jargon peculiar to heraldry, and signifies red. Shakspeare has it again in Timon of Athens:

"With man's blood paint the ground; gules, gules." Heywood, in his Second Part of the Iron Age, has made a verb from it:

6

old Hecuba's reverend locks

trick'di. e. smeared, painted. An heraldick term. Sce Vol. V, p. 162, n. 8. Malone.

7 With eyes like carbuncles,] So, in Milton's Paradise Lost, B. IX, 1. 500:

and carbuncles in his eyes." Steevens.

So proceed you.] These words are not in the folio. Malone.

Pol. 'Fore God, my lord, well spoken; with good accent, and good discretion.

1 Play. Anon he finds him

Striking too short at Greeks; his antique sword,
Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,
Repugnant to command: Unequal match'd,
Pyrrhus at Priam drives; in rage, strikes wide;
But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword
The unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium,
Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top
Stoops to his base; and with a hideous crash
Takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear: for, lo! his sword
Which was declining on the milky head
Of reverend Priam, scem'd i' the air to stick:
So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood;
And, like a neutral to his will and matter,
Did nothing.

But, as we often see, against some storm,
A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,
The bold winds speechless, and the orb below
As hush as death:1 anon, the dreadful thunder
Doth rend the region: So, after Pyrrhus' pause,
A roused vengeance sets him new a work;
And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall
On Mars's armour, forg'd for proof eterne,
With less remorse than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword

9

- as a painted tyrant,] Shakspeare was probably here thinking of the tremendous personages often represented in old tapestry, whose uplifted swords stick in the air, and do nothing. Malone,

1 as we often see, against some storm, The bold winds speechless, and the orb below As hush as death:] So, in Venus and Adonis:

"Even as the wind is hush'd before it raineth."

This line leads me to suspect that Shakspeare wrote-the bold wind speechless. Many similar mistakes have happened in these plays, where the word ends with the same letter with which the next begins. Malone.

2 And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall

On Mars's armour, &c.] This thought appears to have been adopted from the 3d Book of Sidney's Arcadia: "Vulcan, when he wrought at his wive's request Æneas an armour, made not his hammer beget a greater sound than the swords of those noble knights did" &c. Steevens.

Now falls on Priam.—

Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods,
In general synod, take away her power;

Break all the spokes, and fellies from her wheel,

And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,
As low as to the fiends!

Pol. This is too long.

Ham. It shall to the barber's, with your beard.-Pr'ythee, say on:-He's for a jig, or a tale of bawdry,3 or he sleeps:-say on: come to Hecuba.

3

1 Play. But who, ah woe!4 had seen the mobled

queens

He's for a jig, or a tale of bawdry,] See note on your only jig-maker," Act III, sc. ii.

Steevens.

A jig, in our poet's time, signified a ludicrous metrical composition, as well as a dance. Here it is used in the former sense. So, in Florio's Italian Dict. 1598: “Frottola, a countrie jigg, or round, or countrie song, or wanton verses." Malone.

4 But who, ah wo!] Thus the quarto, except that it has-a woe. A is printed instead of ah in various places in the old copies. Woe was formerly used adjectively for woeful. So, in Antony and Cleopatra:

" Woe, woe are we, sir, you may not live to wear
"All your true followers out.

The folio reads-But who, O who, &c.

5

Malone.

the mobled queen-] Mobled or mahled signifies, veiled. So, Sandys, speaking of the Turkish women, says, their heads and faces are mabled in fine linen, that no more is to be seen of them than their eyes. Travels. Warburton.

Mobled signifies huddled, grossly covered. Johnson.

I meet with this word in Shirley's Gentleman of Venice: "The moon does mobble up herself." Farmer.

Mobbled is, I believe, no more than a depravation of muffled. It is thus corrupted in Ogilby's Fables, Second Part: "Mobbled nine days in my considering cap, "Before my eyes beheld the blessed day.'

and that

In the West this word is still used in the same sense; is the meaning of mobble in Dr. Farmer's quotation. H. White. The mabled queen, (or mobled queen, as it is spelt in the quarto,) means, the queen attired in a large, coarse, and careless head-dress. A few lines lower we are told she had "a clout upon that head, where late the diadem stood."

To mab, (which in the North is pronounced mob, and hence the spelling of the old copy in the present instance,) says Ray in his Dict. of North Country words, is "to dress carelessly. Mabs are slatterns."

Ham. The mobled queen?

Pol. That's good; mobled queen is good.

1 Play. Run barefoot up and down, threat'ning the flames

With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head,
Where late the diadem stood; and, for a robe,
Abcut her lank and all o'er-teemed loins,

A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up;
Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd,
'Gainst fortune's state would treason have pronounc'd:
But if the gods themselves did see her then,
When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs;
The instant burst of clamour that she made,
(Unless things mortal move them not at all)
Would have made milch the burning eye of heaven,
And passion in" the gods. passionate

Pol. Look, whether he has not turned his colour, and has tears in 's eyes.-Pr'ythee, no more.

Ham. 'Tis well; I'll have thee speak out the rest of this soon. Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for they are the abstract, and brief chronicles, of the time: After your death you were better have a bad epitaph, than their ill report while you live.

Pol. My lord, I will use them according to their desert.

Ham. Odd's bodikin, man, much better: Use every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping?

The ordinary morning head-dress of ladies continued to be distinguished by the name of a mab, to almost the end of the reign of George the Second. The folio reads-the inobled queen, Malone.

In the counties of Essex and Middlesex, this morning cap has always been called-a mob, and not a mab. My spelling of the word therefore agrees with its most familiar pronunciation.

Steevens.

With bisson rheum;] Bisson or beesen, i. e. blind. A word still in use in some parts of the North of England. So, in Coriolanus: "What harm can your bisson conspectuities glean out of this character?" Steevens.

7

made milch-] Drayton in the 13th Song of his Polyolbign gives this epithet to dew: " Exhaling the milch dew," &c. Steevens.

Use them after your own honour and dignity: The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in.

Pol. Come, sirs. [Exit PoL. with some of the Players. Ham. Follow him, friends: we 'll hear a play to-morrow. Dost thou hear me, old friend; can you play the murder of Gonzago?

1 Play. Ay, my lord.

Ham. We'll have it to-morrow night. You could, for a need, study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which I would set down, and insert in 't? could you not? 1 Play. Ay, my lord.

Ham. Very well.-Follow that lord; and look you mock him not. [Exit Player.] My good friends, [to Ros. and GUIL.] I'll leave you till night: you are welcome to Elsinore.

Ros. Good my lord!

[Exeunt Ros. and GUIL. Ham. Ay, so, God be wi' you :-Now I am alone. O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! Is it not monstrous, that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit,

Is it not monstrous, that this player here,] It should seem from the complicated nature of such parts as Hamlet, Lear, &c. that the time of Shakspeare had produced some excellent performers. He would scarce have taken the pains to form characters which he had no prospect of seeing represented with force and propriety on the stage.

His plays indeed, by their own power, must have given a different turn to acting, and almost new-created the performers of his age. Mysteries, Moralities, and Enterludes, afforded no materials for art to work on, no discriminations of character or variety of appropriated language. From tragedies like Cambyses, Tamburlaine, and Feronymo, nature was wholly banished; and the comedies of Gammer Gurton, Common Condycyons, and The Old Wives Tale, might have had justice done to them by the lowest order of human beings.

Sanctius his animal, mentisque capacius alte

was wanting, when the dramas of Shakspeare made their first appearance; and to these we were certainly indebted for the excellence of actors who could never have improved so long as their sensibilities were unawakened, their memories burthened only by pedantick or puritanical declamation, and their manners vulgarized by pleasantry of as low an origin. Steevens.