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Line 723 - Commentary Note (CN) More Information

Notes for lines 0-1017 ed. Bernice W. Kliman
For explanation of sigla, such as jen, see the editions bib.
723 A Serpent stung me, so the whole eare of Denmarke1.5.36
1723- mtby2
mtby2 : pope
723 so] Thirlby (1723-): “This word too I suppose Mr Pope was pleased to throw out explenitudine ---tis to help the verse which was well enough before, & perhaps better than it it [sic] is now, as without doubt the sense was.”
1980 pen2
pen2: xref
723-5 the . . . abusde] Spencer (ed. 1980): “Old Hamlet’s anticipation of his account of his own poisoned ear (lines 63-4; see also 3.2.144, stage direction) is almost like one of his son’s characteristic puns. The many allusions in the play to ears (especially damaged ones)—e.g. 1.1.31, 1.2.171, 2.2.475 and 560, 3.2.10, 3.4.65 and 96, and 4.5.91—produce a half-conscious reminder of the circumstances of the murder.”
1982 ard2
ard2: Belleforest; //
723 A Serpent] Jenkins (ed. 1982): “In Belleforest the murder took place at a banquet. The secret poisoning recalls the allegory of the sleeping king and the serpent’s sting in 2H6 3.2.254 ff.”
1990 Cummings
Cummings: Eustachio +
723 eare of Denmarke] Cummings (1990, pp. 80-92) relates Sh.’s fascination with the act of hearing in Hamlet to the discovery of the eustachian tube by Bartolomo Eustachio in 1564, announced in De auditus organus. Cummings lists several other medical sources. His thesis is that Hamlet fails “to hear what another person means or needs...” (p. 87). He refers to several places where Hamlet shows he doesn’t hear, including the nunnery scene, where he does not hear Ophelia’s distress, and the graveyard scene where he mis-hears Laertes who hasn’t said anything about conjuring the stars (87-9).
“ [. . . ] Hamlet’s moral failure seems to me to be very deeply and repetitively woven into the image fabric of the text” (91). The image-clusters of ears and hearing point “to the tragic failure of the Prince to transform what he hears into the heroic action that would both signal his princely obedience to the king, and save both the kingdom and his own life” (91).
1993 SQ
Ayers
723 Serpent] Ayers (1993, p. 429): “The idealization of Hamlet’s father, suggested variously by both Hamlet and Horatio, points to a more general idealization of the past; the Denmark of Old Hamlet becomes by association a prelapsarian second Eden, one which has come to an end in a garden through the agency of another ’serpent,’ whose chosen means of access is (also) the ear.”
2006 ard3q2
ard3q2: xref
723-5 eare . . . abusde] Thompson & Taylor (ed. 2006): “See [744-58] and [41 CN]”
723 744