Notes for lines 2023-2950 ed. Frank N. Clary
1870 Abbott
Abbott: Cor., Luc. //s; xref.
2364 a sleepe] Abbott (1870, §24): “(1) Before nouns. In these adverbs the a- represents some preposition, as ‘in,’ ‘on,’ ‘o,’ &c. contracted by rapidity of pronunciation. As might be expected, the contraction is mostly found in the prepositional phrases that are in most common use, and therefore most likely to be rapidly pronounced. Thus (Cor. 3.1261-2 [1990-91]) Menenius says: ‘I would they were in Tiber,’ while the Patrician, ‘I would they were a-bed.’ Here a- means ‘in,’ as in the following:
“So Luc. 1496. And compare Ham. [2.1.58 (951)], ‘there (he) was a’ gaming,’ with ‘When he is drunk, asleep, or in his rage At gaming.’ – Ham. 3.3.91.”
1982 ard2
ard2: john, Sheridan (
apud Boswell),
Richardson, Hazlitt, Coleridge, Bradley, Stoll
, Alex, kit, Sisson, Gentillet, Nashe, Bodin, Daunce, Heywood, Browne, Prosser, Gottschalk; xrefs.; Kyd, Fletcher, Heywood analogues
2364-70 Jenkins (ed. 1982): “On this desire to effect the King’s damnation,
LN. Hamlet’s desire to effect the King’s damnation was immensely shocking to Dr Johnson, who was not alone in the 18th century in thinking it ‘too horrible to be read or to be uttered’. That it is less shocking to us now is no doubt due to the dimming belief in hell. The first to explain it away was merely a pretext for delay may have been the actor Thos. Sheridan, as approvingly reported by Boswell (
London Journal, 6 April 1763); but after Wm.
Richardson had ventured ‘to affirm’ that Hamlet’s words belied ‘his real sentiments’ (
Shakespeare’s Dramatic Charcters, 1784, pp. 158-62), it became customary to maintain that the motive Hamlet avowed for deferring his revenge was ‘only an excuse for his own want of resolution’ (Hazlitt,
Characters of Shakespear’s Plays. Cf. Coleridge, 1.29-30; Bradley, pp. 134-5). The dominance of this view in defiance of the text for well over a century is one of the most remarkable aberrations in the history of criticism. So strong was the tradition that long after the cogent attack on it by Stoll
(Hamlet: An Historical and Comparative Study, 1919, pp. 51-6), distinguished scholars continued to interpret Hamlet’s words as disguising, not expressing, his true feelings (e.g. Kittredge, p. xv; Alexander,
Hamlet Father and Son, 1955, pp. 144-6; Sisson,
Shakespeare’s Tragic Justice, 1962, p. 68). Yet such an explanation could hardly have occurred to Elizabethans taught by their medieval ancestors to find satisfaction in the torments of heretics and sinners and well able to appreciate Hamlet’s logical and theological rigour. Horrifying as it might be actually to promote and enemy’s damnation, the attitude of Hamlet would not be unfamiliar. Gentillet’s
Discours contre Machiavel (1576; trans. Patrick, 1602) denounced the vengefulness of those who would force a victim ‘to give himself to the devil’ and thus ‘seek in slaying the body to damn the soul, if they could’ (
iii.6). The notorious episode in Nashe’s
Unfortunate Traveller of the man who induced his foe to abjure God’s mercy by offering to spare his life and then killed him before he could repent (Nashe, 2.320-6) is in fact the elaboration of a well-known story – found, for example, from 1580 on in Jean Bodin’s
République (v.6; trans. Knolles, 1606, fol. 631
v. See also Edw. Daunce
, A Brief Discourse of the Spanish State, 1590, p. 24; and, though a later work, Heywood,
Gynaikeion, 1624, p. 400; and cf. Sir T. Browne,
Religio Medici,
ii.6;
Vulgar Errors,
vii.19).
“Hamlet’s sentiments, then, are not more than might be expected of a revenger, in literature if not in life. And they are consistent with others in the play. Hamlet himself as the object of revenge hears Laertes say to him, ‘The devil take thy soul’ [5.1.259 (
3454)], and his own account of the deaths he contrived for
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern adds ‘Not shriving-time allowed’ [5.2.47 (
3549)]. (Cf. also [1.2.182-3 (
370-1)], his horror of finding his foe in heaven; and [4.3.33-5 (2695-7)], his jocular confidence in his uncle’s destination.) The contemporary drama, as scholars from Steevens to Stoll have shown, confirms this revenge code.
The Spanish Tragedy ends with Revenge’s promise, now that the villains are dead, to begin an ‘endless tragedy’ for them in the underworld. In Fletcher’s
The Pilgrim, as in
Hamlet, a character asks if it is ‘revenge’ to kill an enemy when he would ‘soar to Heaven’ instead of waiting till he is ‘fit. . ., his pious armour off’ (
2.2..320-58); and one in Heywood’s
The Captives proclaims, ‘Strangle him With all his sins about him. ‘Twere not else A revenge worth my fury’ (
3.3.71-3). See also notes on ll. 89-90, 91. Without recourse to Continental instances, Eleanor Prosser (Appx.
b) has assembled from English literature 23 cases of desire or plan to kill a foe in such a way as to damn his soul as well.
“But although Hamlet’s sentiments are those proper to a revenger and must be accepted at face value, that does not mean that the play or its author approves them. On the contrary, a sensational convention is brilliantly used by Shakespeare for his own dramatic ends. First, theatrically, the convention facilitates at the centre of the play a spectacularly ironic scene: the revenger with his passion at its climax following proof of his enemy’s guilt, is presented with his victim defenceless and alone; and yet it is revenge itself that provides an incontestable reason why this seemingly perfect opportunity is one impossible to take. But second, thematically, the convention enables revenge to be shown in its most repulsive aspect: for the appropriateness of Hamlet’s utterance here is not to his lack of resolution, nor to the scruples of conscience, still less to the ‘sensibility’ of ‘a gentle disposition’ (
Richardson), but to that savage mood which he has just exhibited to us, that mood in which he could ‘drink hot blood’ with the contagion of hell upon him [3.2.390 (
2261-3)]. The revenger’s horrifying sentiments contribute to the presentation of the hero in that significant phase of the play in which the evil of his double-sided nature – and his double-sided task – is temporarily uppermost. See [3.2.390 (
2261-3) ln; Intro., pp. 154-6. Cf. P. Gottschalk, ‘Hamlet and the Scanning of Revenge’,
SQ,
xxiv, 155-70.”
