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Line 790 - 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.
790 O most pernicious woman. 
1858 col3
col3
790 Collier (ed. 1858): “ ‘And perfidious,’ clearly required by the line, is only found in the corr. fo. 1632. The two words, ‘pernicious’ and “perfidious,’ looking like each other, perhaps the old printer, having composed the first, fancied he had composed both, and thus omitted a very striking and appropriate epithet.”
Ed. note: "And perfidious" from the Perkins F2, was not included in Collier’s "own" next ed., 1878.
1859 Werder
Werder
790 Werder (1859, trans. 1907, p. 81): “The mother comes first in the vent of his indignation and rage. [quotes 790] . . . That is just, for the greater crime of the murder came as a direct consequence of her weakness.”
1874 Malleson
Malleson: xref
790-1 Malleson (1874, p. 470): “Even before he had learnt from the Ghost the full measure of his mother’s guilt, he had said in his anguish at her marriage within a month—‘a little month’—after his father’s death, ‘Fraity thy name is, woman;’ [322-30], and when the Ghost has left him he first apostrophises her, ‘O most pernicious woman,’ and puts the murdered ‘the smiling damed villain,’ in the second place. His mother has destroyed his faith in every woman . . . .”
1877 v1877
v1877 = col3 (minus 1st sentence)
790
1885 macd
macd
790 MacDonald (ed. 1885): “The Ghost has revealed her adultery: Hamlet suspects her of complicity in the murder [2410].”
1929 trav
trav
790 pernicious] Travers (ed. 1929): “ = not simply fatal, but wickedly so.”
1930 Granville-Barker
Granville-Barker
790-3 Granville-Barker (1930, rpt. 1946, 1: 63): “It is significant that his next thought [after his vow to remember] is not of Claudius’ guilt, but his mother’s [quotes 790]. For there has been his wound, and it is widened now and deepened. And the more fully, filled-in picture of the pair of them, of her and the ’smiling’—the seductively smiling—’damned villain,’ so convulses and shakes him that he tries the seemingly ridiculous remedy of setting down upon the actual tables taken from his pocket [quotes 793]. But the simple steadying of the hand to write the words does steady his hand.”
1987 oxf4
oxf4
790 pernicious] Hibbard (ed. 1987): "wicked (the usual sense in Shakespeare)."
322 790