Line 330 - Commentary Note (CN) 
Commentary notes (CN):
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3. Original comment. When the second line is blank after the writer's siglum, we are signaling that we have not seen that writer's gloss prior to that date. We welcome correction on this point.
4. Words from the play under discussion (lemmata). In the third line or lines of a record, the lemmata after the TLN (Through Line Number] are from Q2. When the difference between Q2 and the authors' lemma(ta) is significant, we include the writer's lemma(ta). When the gloss is for a whole line or lines, only the line number(s) appear. Through Line Numbers are numbers straight through a play and include stage directions. Most modern editions still use the system of starting line numbers afresh for every scene and do not assign line numbers to stage directions.
5. Bibliographic information. In the third line of the record, where we record the gloss, we provide concise bibliographic information, expanded in the bibliographies, several of which are in process.
6. References to other lines or other works. For a writer's reference to a passage elsewhere in Ham. we provide, in brackets, Through Line Numbers (TLN) from the Norton F1 (used by permission); we call these xref, i.e., cross references. We call references to Shakespearean plays other than Ham. “parallels” (//) and indicate Riverside act, scene and line number as well as TLN. We call references to non-Shakespearean works “analogues.”
7. Further information: See the Introduction for explanations of other abbreviations.
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Notes for lines 0-1017 ed. Bernice W. Kliman
| 330 Let me not thinke on’t; frailty thy name is woman | 1.2.146 |
|---|
313 314 330 331 2531 2767
1597 King James VI
James
330 frailty thy name is woman]
James vi (1597, pp. 46-7): <p. 46> On women, James has one of his characters, Epistemon, respond to Philomathes’s question about why there are so many more female than male witches. </p. 46> <p. 47> It’s because women are frailer than men, and thus more easily ensnared by the Devil, as we see by the instance of Eve. </p. 47>
1607 Beumont and Fletcher
Beaumont and Fletcher
330 frailty thy name is woman] Beaumont and Fletcher (The Woman-Hater (3.1) 1607, a possible allusion to Hamlet apud E. H. Hickey in Ingleby et al. 1932, 1: 182): “That pleasing piece of frailty that we call woman.”
1729/30
Theobald Folger W.b. 74)
Theobald letter
330 frailty . . . woman] Theobald (14 March 1730, fol. 57r; Nichols, Illus, 2:559) to Warburton: “Very like that short satiric reflection of Virgil: —Varium et mutabile semper Faemina.”
1733 theo1
theo1 = Theobald letter +
330 frailty . . . woman] Theobald (ed. 1733): “But that it would displease Mr. Pope to have it suppos’d, that Satire can have any place in Tragedy, (of which I shall have Occasion to speak farther anon,) I should make no Scruple to pronounce this Reflection a fine Laconic Sarcasm. It is as concise in the Terms, and, perhaps, more sprightly in the Thought and Image, than the Fling of Virgil upon the Sex, in his fourth Æneid.‘— varium * mutabile sempèr Fæmina.’ Mr. Dryden has remark’d, that this is the sharpest Satire in the fewest Words, that ever was made on Womankind; for both the Adjectives are Neuter, and Animal must be understood to make them Grammar. ’Tis certain, the design’d Contempt is heightened by this Change of the Gender: but, I presume, Mr. Dryden had forgot this Passage of Shakespeare, when he declar’d on the Side of Virgil’s Hemistich, as the sharpest Satire he had met with.”
1733 theo1 Lr
theo1 Lr.
n. 9. He has a much longer note on this in 1733 than in THEOL, none in 1740 or 1757. His remark in 1733 is interesting for its reflection on genre:
330 Theobald (ed. 1733, 5.199 n. 52) in a note to Lr. 4.6.271 (2724) cites the same satiric barb in Virgil that he refers to in Ham. but without mentioning Ham. In Lr. the line leading to the note is Edgar’s after he reads Goneril’s letter to Edmund, taken from Oswald, whom he has slain: “Oh, undistinguish’d space of woman’s Will!” “Mr. WW [Warburton] says that this is a more delicate than Virgil’s ’Varium & mutabile semper Faemina’ ” Theobald goes on to discuss the meaning, which is that from will to action there is no interlude, presumably for thought. He also refers to Sancho’s line, “Betwixt a Woman’s Yea, and No, I would not undertake a Pin’s Point.”
1752 Anon.
Anon. ≈ theo without attribution
330 Anon. (1752, pp. 33-4): <p. 33>“In several Parts of this Play the Poet seems to level his Satyr against the Fair Sex. Nothing can be produced so severe as </p. 33><p. 34> “
Frailty, thy Name is, Woman.’ The ‘—Varium & mutabile semper Faemina,’ of
Virgil, has not half the Poignancy.” </p. 34>
I don’t know which came 1st, Anon or Dodd, but TLN 719, 721 suggests that Anon, came 1st,
1752 Dodd
Dodd ≈ theo on Dryden
330 Dodd (1752, 1: 218): “Mr. Dryden observes, on the famous ‘—Varium & mutabile semper Faemina’ of Virgil, that it is the sharpest satire in the fewest words, that ever was made on womankind; for both the adjectives are neuter and animal must be understood to make them grammar. Mr. Theobald is of opinion, this of Shakespear—Frailty thy name is woman, is, as being equally concise in the terms, and more sprightly in the thought and image, to be preferred to Virgil, and the sharper satire of the two.”
330-1 Let . . .
month]
Richardson (1774, rpt. 1812, pp. 82-3): <p.82> “By this effort he loses sight, for a moment, </p. 82> <p. 83> of the particular circumstances that gave him pain. The impression, however, is not entirely effaced; and he expresses it by a general reflection. ‘Frailty, thy name is woman!’
“This expression is too refined and artificial for a mind strongly agitated: yet, it agrees entirely with such a degree of emotion and pensiveness as disposes us to moralize. Considered as the language of a man voiolently affected, it is improper; considered in relation to what goes before and follows after, ir appears perfectly natural.”
330-1 Let . . .
month]
Richardson (1774, rpt. 1812, pp. 83-4): <p. 83> “Hamlet’s laboured composure is imperfect; . . . and he relapses into deeper anguish. Though he turned aside from a painful idea, he was not unable to remove the impression, or vary in any considerable degree his state of mind: the impression remained, and restored the idea in its fullest vigour” [and
Richardson quotes 331-4 </p. 83> <p. 84> 335-7.]
“It is also observable, that, in consequence of the increasing violence of the emotion, the time so dexterously diminished from two months, to a little month, is rendered as it were visible by allusions and circumstances so striking, as to have in themselves a powerful tendency to stmulate and augment his anguish. ‘Or ere those shoes were old, With which she follow’d my poor father’s body, &c.’
“And again: ‘Within a month . . . She married!’ The crisis of his agitation, heightened to its extremity, is strongly marked in the following exclamation: ‘Oh, most wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!’ </p. 84>
1805 Seymour
Seymour ≈ pope
330 Seymour (1805, 2:147) says that the line “should be, ‘Let me not think;—Frailty, thy name is woman.’ ”
1844 Dyce
Dyce : Collier
330 on’t] Dyce (1844, p. 205): “Why a full stop after ‘on’t’? The sense runs on from ‘within a month’ to ‘A little month.’ ”
1859 Werder
Werder
330 frailty]
Werder (1859, trans. 1907, pp. 58, 63-4) <p. 58> believes that Hamlet is so dishonored by his mother’s sexual behavior that he “must hate and scorn her. . . . With Hamlet’s grievous bitterness is mingled the degrading sense of all natural delicacy so deeply insulted and violated.” The emotion of both Ghost and Hamlet is “mortification.” </p. 58> <p. 63> There isn’t a single hint that she married Claudius for political reasons. </p. 63> <p. 64> However, in spite of her frailty, Hamlet still loves her. </p. 64>
1870 rug
rug
330 Moberly (ed. 1870, p. viii): “[Hamlet’s] grief is increased by his mental habit of seeing all that goes on around him under the form of reflection; no act appears to him incomplete, single, and unconnected. He would argue that from the one evil act of his mother, first, that her motive must have been simple and unmixed evil; then, that her whole nature must be homogeneous with this motive; and, lastly, that all women must be as corrupt as she is.”
1885 macd
macd ≈ rug without attribution
330 Macdonald (ed. 1885): “From his mother he generalizes to woman. After having believed in such a mother, it may well be hard for a man to believe in any woman.”
macd
330 MacDonald (ed. 1885, p. 62): “Her conduct and his partial discovery of her character, is the sole cause of his misery.”
1904 ver
ver
330 frailty . . . woman] Verity (ed. 1904): “Another example of Hamlet’s morbid generalising; from the ‘frailty’ of one woman he condemns the whole sex. ‘Frail’ exactly describes the Queen.”
1926 Tilley
Tilley: Euphues 74; Love’s Metamorphosis 4.2.106-7: “more wavering than the air”; Petite Pallace 2, 114 and many more, but all have to do with wavering, inconstancy, and none mention frailty, which is the signature excellence of the line.
330 Tilley (1926 § 704): “Women are (as) inconstant (as the wind) .”
1950 Tilley
Tilley
330 frailty . . . woman] Tilley (1950, W 674): “A Woman’s mind (a woman) is always mutable c1550 Gosynhyll Schoolhouse Wom. 1. 447, p. 122: Women alwaies are variable.”
1957 pel1
pel1: standard
333 Niobe] Farnham (ed. 1957): “the proud mother who boasted of having more children than Leto and was punished when they were slain by Apollo and Artemis, children of Leto; the grieving Niobe was changed by Zeus into a stone, which continually dropped tears.”
1980 pen2
pen2
330 frailty . . . woman] Spencer (ed. 1980): “Shakespeare early establishes Hamlet’s generalizing frame of mind.”
1987 oxf4
oxf4
330 frailty . . . woman] Hibbard (ed. 1987): "Compare ‘Women are frail’ (Dent W700.1); and Twelfth Night [2.2.31-2 (687-8)] ‘Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we │ For such as we are made of, such we be.’ "
1993 Lupton&Reinhard
Lupton & Reinhard
330 frailty . . . woman] Lupton & Reinhard (1993, p. 81): “[W]e would emphasize that, although Ophelia appears as the means of Hamlet’s separation from his mother through the acquisition of a new object—the ‘classical’ Freudian narrative of Oedipalization—Ophelia is nonetheless continually linked in the play to Gertrude, and to Gertrude not as object of incestuous desire but as maternal Other of demand.
“Thus Hamlet’s early conflation of Ophelia and Gertrude in the fantasmatic projection of their voracious sexualities is born out in Ophelia’s erotic songs, which use the theater of madness to stage the crossing of the Other of demand [*] and the object of desire in the fundamental fantasy of Hamlet and Hamlet.” See n. 2767.
* The
Other of demand : <p. 58>“as alienating Other: following Lacan, we argue in the next chapter that the mother in
Hamlet functions primarily not as Oedipal object, but as the Other of demand whose excess enjoyment impedes the classical (masculine) dialectic of desire.” </p. 58>
2000 King
King
330 frailty thy name is woman] King (2000, 60): “"The other allusions to rot [besides that in 678] between acts one and five indicate an association with the feminine and accelerate its slide from a fixed male point to an unfixed female one. For example, when Hamlet makes a wish for his own rot [’O, that this too too solid flesh would melt Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! 313-14] his speech careens quickly from self-pity to the curse ’Frailty, thy name is woman!’ [330]. Similarly, in the closet scene Hamlet warns his mother that her, ’rank corruption’ will mine ’all within’ [2531].”
2006 ard3q2
ard3q2: Dent; MM //
330 frailty . . . woman] Thompson & Taylor (ed. 2006): “i.e. women embody or personify frailty or lack of constancy: a standard misogynistic attitude of Shakespeare’s time and proverbial (Dent, W700.1), but see MM 2.4.121-86, where Isabella, admitting that women are ’ten times frail’, nevertheless rejects Angelo’s advances.”