Notes for lines 0-1017 ed. Bernice W. Kliman
| 499 “The chariest maide is prodigall inough | 1.3.36 |
|---|
1736 Stubbs
Stubbs
499-502 Stubbs (1736, p. 19): “The Advice of Laertes to his Sister contains the soundest Reasoning, express’d in the most nervous and poetical Manner, and is full of Beauties; particularly, I can never enough admire the Modesty inculcated in these Lines: ‘The chariest Maid is prodigal enough. If She unmask her Beauty to the Moon.’”
1752 Anon.
Anon.
499-507 Anon. (1752, pp. 15-16): <p. 15> “This Play every where abounds with just, excellent and moral Precepts, which I cannot too warmly recommend to the serious Perusal and Consideration of every young Lady in
Great-Britain; who, did they but seriously reflect, that each unguarded Word or Action, however innocent the Intention may be, is liable to be basely misrepresented by the designing Arts of malicious Slanderers, would have a greater Regard to their Conduct and Behaviour, than they seem to have at present. Their Universality and Power of this fashionable Vice is well described by
Beaumont and
Fletcher in their
Philaster, or
Love lies a Bleeding.‘O where is Honour safe? Not with the Living; They feed upon Opinions, Errors, Dreams, And make them Truths: They draw a Nourishment </p. 15><p.16 > Out of Defamings, grow upon Disgraces, And when they see a Virtue fortify’d Strongly above the Batt’ry of their Tongues, O, how they cast to sink it, and defeated, Soul-sick with Poison, strike the Monuments Where noble Names lie sleeping, ‘till they Swear, And the cold Marble melt.—’” </p. 16>
1765- mDavies
mDavies
499 chariest] Davies (1765-) writes: “The superlative is here put for ye positive—The cautious, careful & discreet Virgin.”
1773- mSteevens
mSteevens
499 chariest] Steevens (1773-): “most cautious, discreet.”
1773 gent1
gent1
499 chariest] Gentleman (ed. 1773): “The chariest—is the coyest—the most cautious.”
1778 v1778
v1778 ≈ mSteevens +
499 chariest] Steevens (ed. 1778): “Chary is cautious. So, in Greene’s Never too Late, 1616: ‘Love requires not chastity, but that her soldiers be chary.’ Again, ‘She liveth chastly enough, that liveth charily.’ Steevens.”
1784 Davies
Davies
499-500 Davies (1784, 3:13): “In the advice of Danaüs to his daughters, in the Suppliants of AEschylus, to guard against the inticements of youth, there are some lines, which bear a strong resemblance of Laertes’s instructions to Ophelia. ‘—I see your blooming age Inforcing soft desire. I know how hard To guard the lovely flowers that grace that season. The queen of love proclaims their opening bloom: Ah! would she suffer it to remain uncropt! For, on the delicate tints that kindling glow On beauty’s vermeil cheek, each roving youth With melting wishes darts the am’rous glance.’ [R.] Potter’s AEschylus.”
1785 v1785
v1785 = v1778 subst.
499 chariest]
1787 ann
ann = v1785
499 chariest]
1790 mal
mal = v1785
499 chariest]
1791- rann
rann =
john minus discreet
499 chariest] Rann (ed. 1791-): “The most cautious.”
1793 v1793
v1793 = mal
499 chariest]
1803 v1803
v1803 = v1793
499 chariest]
1813 v1813
v1813 = v1803
499 chariest]
1819 cald1
cald1: Steevens +
499 chariest] Caldecott (ed. 1819): “She who acts with due wariness, with the truest discretion, is dearest to herself, is &c. ‘Be charie of thy chastitie, which sutors seeke so shamefully.’ Peter Colse’s Penelope’s Complaint, 4to. 1590. Signat. G. ‘Sens by your meanes my life is become more deere unto me, I am muche more charie that it maye not be lost.’ Nic. Udall’s Erasm. Apopthegm. 12mo. 1592, fo. 221,b. ‘When a man hath a glasse of a brittle substance, and for the worth of great price and value, he is very chary and heedfull thereof.’ Nich. Breton’s Poste, &c. 4to. 1637. p. 2.
“Mr. Steevens [quotes his analogues]. We have chariness, [Wiv. 2.1.99 (641)] Mrs. Ford, and unchary, [TN 3.4.202 (1720)] Olivia, and ‘Diana too chary in her thoughts. Venus more charie of her face than her maidenhead.’ Greene’s Orpharion. 4to. 1599, p. 38.
1820 Bicknell
Bicknell
499 chariest] Bicknell (1820, p. 152n): “So in Beaumont and Fletcher’s ‘Faithful Friend,’ Act 3, Scene 1: ‘A desperate man That climbs a tower, whose top the wind ne’er touched, Must chary be, lifting his resolute foot; Or headlong down he comes.’“
1821 v1821
v1821 = v1813
499 chariest]
1826 sing1
sing1 = v1821 without attribution; cald1 without attribution
499 chariest] Singer (ed. 1826): “i.e. the most cautious, the most discreet. In Greene’s Never too Late, 1616: ‘Love requires not chastity, but that her soldiers be chary.’ And again:—‘She lives chastly enough, that lives charily.’ We have chariness in [Wiv. 2.1.99 (641)] and unchary in [TN 3.4.202 (1720)]
1832 cald2
cald2 = cald1 minus Wiv. parallel
499 chariest]
1833 valpy
valpy: standard
499 chariest] Valpy (ed. 1833): “Most cautious.”
1839 knt1
knt1 = standard
499 chariest] Knight (ed. 1839): “Most cautious.”
1854 del2
del2
499 chariest . . . prodigall] Delius (ed. 1854): “chariest steht dem prodigal gegenüber, wie Kargheit der Verschwendung.” [chariest contrasts with prodigal, as parsimony with waste.]
1856 sing2
sing2 = sing1
499 chariest]
1866 dyce2
dyce2
499 chariest]
Dyce (ed. 1866, Glossary,
apud Furness, ed. 1877): “Most scrupulous.”
1868 c&mc
c&mc: standard
499 chariest]
Clarke &
Clarke (ed. 1868): “‘Most regardful of her honour,’ ‘holding her honour most dear.’ See [
Wiv. 2.1.99 (641), n. 10].”
1870 rug1
rug1: standard gloss; + in magenta underlined
499 chariest] Moberly (ed. 1873): “Chary is the German ‘karg,’ niggardly. The meaning conveyed by the superlative is ‘a maid who is really far gone in chariness,’ that is, ‘one who is really chary.’ [. . . .]”
1872 Wedgwood
Wedgwood
499 chariest] Wedgwood (1872): “as, cearig (from cearian, to care), careful, chary. Du, karigh, sordidus, parcus, parcus, tenax.—Kil[ian, Dict. Teutonico-Lat.] g, karg, niggardly.”
1876 N&Q
Anon. [J. D.] ≈ rug on niggardly without attribution + local use
499 chariest] Anon. [J. D.] (5 N&Q 6 [18 Nov. 1876]: 405): “‘Chariest’ (5th S. vi. 345.)—Perhaps the meaning of Shakespeare will appear more clearly from the provincial use of this word. In the north and west of England chary means ‘sparing,’ ‘parsimonious,’ not, as our dictionaries generally interpret the word, ‘cautious’ or ‘sad.’ In Lancashire it was customary to say that a person was chary, i.e. sparing of his money, and in this sense it was almost exclusively used. Miss Baker has chary, sparing, careful.’ In meaning, therefore, it was the exact opposite of ‘prodigal.’ Shakespeare, then, appears to mean that the maid who was most sparing in her addresses during the day is prodigal enough of them, ‘if she unmask her beauty to the moon.’ I find, on consulting Bailey’s Dict. (1724) and Dyche’s (1758), that both explain the word as equivalent to ‘sparing.’ This meaning, then, was not provincial even so late as the middle of the last century. J. D.”
1877 v1877
v1877: DyceG, Wedgwood; rug minus 1st sentence, Hud3 minus last sentence
499 chariest]
Wedgwood (
apud Furness, ed. 1877): “Anglo-Saxon,
cearig (from
carian, to care), careful. Dutch,
karigh, sordidus, parcus, tenax.—Kilian,
Dict. Teutonico-Lat. German,
karg, niggardly.”
v1877
499 chariest]
Furness (ed. 1877): “
Hudson in his forthcoming ed. will read Th’
unchariest maid’: ‘on the ground that ‘“chariest” gives altogether too weak a sense to suit either the character of the speaker or the occasion.’
Ed.”
1880 meik
meik: standard gloss; ≈ rug2 on Ger.
499 chariest] Meikeljohn (ed. 1880): “most careful or scrupulous. S. has also the phrase: ‘The chariness of our honesty’ = the scrupulousness of our honour. (The hard consonants, still found in H. Ger. Karg, have disappeared in chary.)”
1881 hud3
hud3
499 chariest] Hudson (ed. 1881): “The old copies read ‘The chariest maid.” This gives a very weak sense, and one, it seems to me, not at all suited to the occasion or the character. ‘The chary would be far better; but Laertes is apt to be superlative in thought and speech; and surely nothing less than unchariest would be intense enough for him here.”
1899 ard1
ard1= hud3; gloss
499 chariest] Dowden (ed. 1899) gives the Hudson (ed. 1881) reading, defining it as “the least reserved. ‘Chariest’ means entirely modest.”
1904 Thiselton
Thiselton
499 chariest] Thiselton (1904, p. 18) quotes passages from Daye’s “Daphnis and Chloe”(Jacobs) to throw light on chary in Sh.’s time. “These passages suggest that the word may carry three different meanings: ‘loving,’ ‘beloved’ or ‘dear,’ and ‘lovely.’
“Why should we not, then, interpret Polonius’ [sic] ‘The chariest Maid’ as ‘The most dearly beloved Maid,’ making ‘chariest’ equivalent to ‘la plus chérie’? Compare, perhaps, Shakespeare’s 22nd Sonnet: — ‘Bearing thy hert which I will keep so chary As tender nurse her babe from faring ill’ (11-2).
“Polonius’ meaning on these lines will be ‘A Maid, however dearly beloved, should not imagine she is so secure against being taken advantage of as to be safely to discover her beauty to her lover.’ While this seems the best explanation of the passage, it must be confessed that other interpretations are admissible: e.g., much might be said for ‘loveliest’ or for ‘most affectionate.’”
1939 kit2
kit2: standard
499 chariest] Kittredge (ed. 1939): "most sparing; most cautious and circumspect."
1947 cln2
cln2
499 chariest] Rylands (ed. 1947): "most fasditious and modest."
Ed. note: see Century Dictionary, reachable from the hamletworks home page, for definition of chary.
1980 pen2
pen2: standard
499 chariest] Spencer (ed. 1980): “most cautious.”
pen2
499 prodigall inough] Spencer (ed. 1980): “quite sufficiently prodigal (if she does no more than unmask her beauty merely to the chaste moon, whose pale light will show little of it).”
1982 ard2
ard2:
499 Jenkins (ed. 1982): “This and 501, 502 are preceded in Q2 by the inverted commas which are often used in Elizabethan texts to signalize sententious sayings. So too 2762-5.”
ard2: analogue; //s
499 chariest] Jenkins (ed. 1982): “most modest. The general sense of chary as the opposite of prodigal combines with its particular sexual use. Cf. Rich, Apolonius and Silla (rpt. 1921, p. 79), ’I that have so charely preserved mine honour’; TNK 3.4.192, ’laid mine honour too unchary out’; Wiv. 2.1.87, ’sully the chariness of our honesty.’ ”
1985 cam4
cam4
499, 500, 501 Edwards (ed. 1985): "Q2 marks these lines with inverted commas, the signs of ’sentences’, or improving moral generalities--the ’saws of books’ which Hamlet later disavows. Laertes no doubt learned the trick of coining these sententious observations from his father. The tables are turned on him when, after these preachments to Ophelia, he is forced to listen to a battery of moral sentences from his father."
1987 oxf4
oxf4
499-505 Hibbard (ed. 1987): "In Q2 inverted commas are used at the beginnings of lines 36, 38, and 39 to show that the sentiments they introduce are of a proverbial and moralizing kind, commonplaces of the time."
oxf4
499 chariest] Hibbard (ed. 1987): "(1) shyest, most modest (2) most frugal (in displaying her charms). Compare [Wiv. 2.1.98-9 (640-1)], ‘I will consent to act any villainy against him that may not sully the chariness of our honesty.’ "
1988 bev2
bev2: standard
499 chariest] Bevington (ed. 1988): “most scrupulously modest.”
1992 fol2
fol2: standard
499 chariest] Mowat & Werstine (ed. 1992): “most careful”
2006 ard3q2
ard3q2: Dent
499, 501, 502 Thompson & Taylor (ed. 2006): “These lines are prefaced with double quotation marks in Q2, indicating that they are sententious or quasi-proverbial. Dent cites ’Envy (calumny) shoots at the fairest mark’ (E175) and ’The canker soonest eats the fairest rose’ (C56).”
ard3q2: standard
499 chariest] Thompson & Taylor (ed. 2006): “most cautious, shy”
ard3q2: standard
499 prodigall] Thompson & Taylor (ed. 2006): “extravagant, wasteful (also at [582]).”
499
