Ham.
Such an act,
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty;
Calls virtue, hypocrite; takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love,
And sets a blister there; makes marriage vows
As false as dicers' oaths: O, such a deed
As from the body of contraction plucks
The very soul; and sweet religion makes

A rhapsody of words: Heaven's face doth glow;
Yea, this solidity and compound mass,
With tristful visage, as against the doom,
Is thought-sick at the act.

Ah me, what act,

Queen. That roars so loud, and thunders in the index ?° Ham. Look here, upon this picture, and on

this; 4

The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
See what a grace was seated on his brow:
Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself;
An eye like Mars, to threaten or command;
A station like the herald Mercury,
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill;
A combination, and a form, indeed,
Where every god did seem to set his scal,
To give the world assurance of a man:
This was your husband,-look you now, what
follows:

Here is your husband; like a mildew'à ear,
Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?
Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,
And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes?
You cannot call it love: for, at your age,
The hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble,
And waits upon the judgment: And what judg

ment

Would step from this to this ? [Sense, sure, you have,

Else, could you not have motion: But sure, that

sense

Is apoplex'd: for madness would not err;
Nor sense to ecstasy was ne'er so thrall'd,
But it reserv'd some quantity of choice,

To serve in such a difference.] What devil was 't,

That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-blind ??
[Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,
Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,
Or but a sickly part of one true sense

Sets, in the quarto (B); in folio, makes. The repetition of makes is certainly inelegant.

bThis solidity-this earth. Heaven and earth are ashamed of your act.

c The index, is here used as in Othello:-"An index and abscure prologue to the history."

a Station-manner of standing, attitude.

The lines in brackets are found in quarto (B), but are not in the folio. So also the four lines below.

1 Hoodman-blind-the game which we call blind-man's buff.

Hon. A king of snreds and patches:Save me, and hover o'er me with your wings, You heavenly guards!-What would you, gracious figure?

Queen. Alas! he's mad.

Ham. Do you not come your tardy son to
chide,

That, laps'd in time and passion, lets
go by
The important acting of your dread command ?
O, say.

Ghost. Do not forget: This visitation
Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.
But, look! amazement on thy mother sits:
O, step between her and her fighting soul;
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works:
Speak to her, Hamlet.

Ham.
How is it with you, lady?
Queen. Alas, how is 't with you!
That you do bend your eye on vacancy,
And with the incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep;
And as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm,

That I have uttered: bring me to the test,
And I the matter will re-word; which madness
Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul,
That not your trespass, but my madness, speaks:
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place;
Whiles rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven;
Repent what's past: avoid what is to come;
And do not spread the compost o'er the weeds,
To make them rank. Forgive me this my virtue:
For in the fatness of these pursy times,
Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg;
Yea, curb and woo, for leave to do him good.
Queen. O Hamlet! thou hast cleft my heart
in twain.

Ilam. O throw away the worser part of it,
And live the purer with the other half.
Good night: but go not to mine uncle's bed;
Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
[That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat--

a Excrements-hair, nails, feathers, were called excrements. Isaac Walton, speaking of fowls, says, " "their very excrements afford him a soft lodging at night." Rank, in the folio; in quartus, ranker. • Curb to bend-courber.

Of habits devil,-is angel yet in this,—
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock, or livery,
That aptly is put on :] Refrain to-night:
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence: [the next more easy;
For use almost can change the stamp of nature,
And master the devil, or throw him out
With wondrous potency.] Once more, good right:
And when you are desirous to be bless'd,
I'll blessing beg of you. For this same lord,
[Pointing to POLONIUS.
I do repent. But heaven hath pleas'd it so,—
To punish me with this, and this with me,
That I must be their scourge and minister.
I will bestow him, and will answer well
The death I gave him. So again, good night!
I must be crucl, only to be kind:

Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.[One word more, good lady.]

Queen.

What shall I do? Ham. Not this, by no means, that I bid you do: Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed; Pinch wanton on your cheek; call you his mouse; And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses,

Or padling in your neck with his damn'd fingers,
Make you to ravel all this matter out,
That I essentially am not in madness,
But mad in craft. "T were good you let him
know:

For who, that's but a queen, fair, sober, wise,
Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib,
Such dear concernings hide? who would do so?
No, in despite of sense, and secrecy,
Unpeg the basket on the house's top,
Let the birds fly; and, like the famous ape,
To try conclusions, in the basket creep,
And break your own neck down.

Queen. Be thou assur'd, if words be made of

breath,

And breath of life, I have no life to breathe What thou hast said to me.

Ham. I must to England; you know that?

• This passage is generally printed thus:

"That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat
Of habit's devil, is angel yet in this."

The commentators, who have, contrary to the text of the quarto, made habits the genitive case, cannot explain their own reading. As we have printed the passage, we understand it to mean, that custom, who destroys all nicety of feeling-sense-sensibility,-who is the devil that governs our habits-is yet an angel in this, &c.

b The lines in brackets, and the four subsequent lines, are not in the 'folio, but are found in the quarto (B).

c Master-so the quarto (C); it has been changed to either curb, either without curb being the reading of quarto (B). d I. as your son, will ask your blessing, when, by your altered life, you evince your desire to be bless'd.

Paddock-toad.

f Gib-a cat.

I had forgot; 't is so concluded on.
Ham. [There's letters seal'd: and my two
schoolfellows,

Whom I will trust, as I will adders fang'd,—
They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way,
And marshal me to knavery: Let it work,
For 't is the sport, to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petar: and 't shall go hard,
But I will delve one yard below their mines,
And blow them at the moon: O, 't is most sweet,
Hoist with his own petar-blown up with his own engine.

When in one line two crafts directly meet."]
This man shall set me packing.

I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room :--
Mother, good night.-Indeed, this counsellor
Is now most still, most secret, and most grave,
Who was in life a foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you:
Good night, mother.

[Exeunt severally; HAMLET dragging
in the body of POLONIUS.

These lines in brackets are not in the folio.

'SCENE II. "I'll have a suit of sables."

Sir Thomas Hanmer turned "I'll have a suit of sables," into "I'll have a suit of ermine;" and Warburton thinks it extremely absurd that Hamlet and the devil should both go into mourning. Neither Hanmer nor Warburton perceived the latent irony of Hamlet's reply. Ophelia says his father has been dead "twice two months;" he replies, "So long? nay, then let the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of sables." Robes of sable were amongst the most costly articles of dress; and by the Statute of Apparel, 24 Hen. VIII., it was ordained that none under the degree of an earl should use sables. This fur, as is well known, is not black; and it is difficult to know how it became connected with mournful associations, as in Spenser

"Grief all in sable sorrowfully clad."

In heraldry, sable means black; and, according to Peacham, the name thus used is derived from the fur. Sables, then, were costly and magnificent; but not essentially the habiliments of sorrow, though they had some slight association with mournful ideas. If Hamlet had said, "Nay, let the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of ermine," he would merely have said, Let the devil be in mourning, for I'll be fine. But as it is he says, Let the devil wear the real colours of grief, but I'll be magnificent in a garb that only has a facing of something like grief. Hamlet would wear the suit as Ben Jonson's haberdasher wore it: "Would you not laugh to meet a great counsellor of state, in a flat cap, with his trunk-hose, and a hobby-horse cloak; and yond haberdasher in a velvet gown trimmed with sables?"

2 SCENE II. The dumb show enters."

Hamlet has previously described the bad player as "capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows." Mute exhibitions, during the time of Shakspere, and before and after, were often introduced to exhibit such circumstances as the limits of a play would not admit to be represented. In some plays the order of these dumb shows is minutely described; and they generally represent scenes which are not offered to the understanding in the dialogue. We presume, however, that Shakspere, in the instance before us, had some stage authority for making the dumb show represent the same action that is indicated in the dialogue. His dramatic object here is evident: he wanted completely to catch the conscience of the king; and thus, before the actors come to the murder of Gonzago, the king is alarmed, and asks, "Have you heard the argument? is there no offence in it?"

Mr. Collier's History of the Stage, vol. iii. p. 427 we find many curious details on the payment of actors, showing that the performers at our earlier theatres were divided into whole-sharers, threequarter-sharers, half-sharers, and hired men.

'SCENE IV.-"Look here, upon this picture, and on this."

In a volume of Essays, written by Dr. Armstrong, under the assumed name of Lancelot Temple, we have the following observations on the common stage action which accompanies this passage,"As I feel it, there is a kind of tame impropriety, or even absurdity, in that action of Hamlet producing the two miniatures of his father and uncle out of his pocket. It seems more natural to suppose, that Hamlet was struck with the comparison he makes between the two brothers, upon casting his eyes on their pictures, as they hang up in the apartment where this conference passes with the queen. There is not only more nature, more elegance, and dignity in supposing it thus; but it gives occasion to more passionate and more graceful action; and is of consequence likelier to be as Shakspere's imagination had conceived it." It is remarkable that this stage practice, which involved the improbability that Hamlet should have carried his uncle's picture about with him, should have been a modern innovation. In a print pretixed to Rowe's Shakspere, 1709, of which the following is a copy, we see Hamlet pointing to the large pictures on the arras. Our readers will smile at the costume, and will observe that the stage trick of kicking down the chair upon the entrance of the ghost is more than a century old.

King. There's matter in these sighs; these profound heaves;

You must translate: 't is fit we understand them: Where is your son?

Queen. Ah, my good lord, what have I seen to-night!

King. What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet? Queen. Mad as the seas, and wind, when both contend

Which is the mightier: In his lawless fit,
Behind the arras hearing something stir,
He whips his rapier out, and cries, A rat! a rat!b
And, in his brainish apprehension, kills

The unseen good old ran.

King.

O heavy deed!

It had been so with us, had we been there :
His liberty is full of threats to all;

a In the quartos, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern enter with the King and Queen, and are sent away, for a short space, by this line of the Queen :

"Bestow this place on us a little while."

In the folio this line is omitted: and Rosencrantz and Guil. Censtern come in when Guildenstern is called by the King. b In the quartos,

"Whips out his rapier cries, A rat a rat!"

To you yourself, to us, to every one.

Alas! how shall this bloody deed be answer'd
It will be laid to us, whose providence
Should have kept short, restrain'd, and out of

haunt,

This mad young man: but, so much was our love,
We would not understand what was most fit;
But, like the owner of a foul disease,
To keep it from divulging, let it feed
Even on the pith of life. Where is he gone?

Queen. To draw apart the body he hath kill'd: O'er whom his very madness, like some ore, Among a mineral of metals hase,

a

Shows itself pure; he weeps for what is done.

King. O, Gertrude, come away!

The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch,
But we will ship him hence: and this vile deed
We must, with all our majesty and skill,
Both countenance and excuse.-Ho! Guilden
stern!

Enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.
Friends both, go join you with some further aid:
Hamlet in madness hath Polonius slain,
And from his mother's closet hath he dragg'd him:

a Mineral-mine; a compound mass of metals.