2585 Staunton (ed. 1860): [
Hamlet tugging in Polonius ]
“The earliest quarto has, ‘
Exit Hamlet with the dead body;’ the folio, ‘
Exit Hamlet tugging in Polonius.’ It is remarkable that, while nearly every department of our early literature has been ransacked to supply illustrations of
Shakespeare’s language and ideas, so little has been done towards their elucidation from the history of his own stage. When Hamlet, at the termination of the present scene, says, ‘I’ll lug the guts into the neighbour room,’ the commentators very properly reply to the objections of those who, unacquainted with old language, complain of the grossness of expression, that the word
guts was not by any means so offensive to delicacy formerly as it is considered now. It was commonly used, in fact, where we should employ
entrails, and in this place really signifies no more than
lack-brain or
shallow-pate. But a little consideration of the exigencies of the theatre in
Shakespeare’s time, which not only obliged an actor to play two or more parts in the same drama, but to perform such servile offices as are now done by attendants of the stage, would have enabled them to show that the line in question is a mere interpretation to afford the player an excuse for removing the body. We append a few examples where the same expedient is adopted for the same purpose. Among them the notable instance of Sir John Falstaff carrying off the body of Harry Percy on his back, an exploit as clumsy and unseemly as Hamlet’s ‘tugging’ out Polonius, and, like that, perpetuated on the modern stage only from sheer ignorance of the circumstances which originated such a practice:
Rom. [3.1.196-7 (1641-3)];
R2: [5.5.117, 118 (2789, 2790)];
1H4 5.4.156 (3121)];
1H6 [1.4.110 (584)];
Ibid. [2.5.120, 121 (1191, 1192)];
Ibid. [4.7.91, 92 (2325, 2326)];
2H6 [4.1.145 (2316)];
Ibid. [4.10.83, 84 (2988, 2989)];
Ibid. [5.2.61-5 (3283-87)];
3H6 [2.5.113 (1251)];
Ibid. [2.5 121, 122 (1259,1260)];
Ibid. [2.5.128 (2168, 2169)];
R3 R3 [1.4.280, 281 (1115, 1116)];
Lr. [4.6.284-6 (2741-43)];
Tro. [4.4.124, 125 (2518, 2519)];
JC [3.2.260 (1798)];
Ibid.
JC [5.5.78, 79 (2727, 2728)];
Ant. [4.9.30-2 (2733, 2734)];
Ibid. [4.14.138 (2993)]. These instances from
Shakespeare alone, and they could easily be multiplied, will suffice to bring into view one of the inconveniences to which the elder dramatists were subject through the paucity of actors; and, at the same time, by exhibiting the mode in which they endeavoured to obviate the difficulty, may afford a key to many passages and incidents that before appeareed anomalous.”