HW HomePrevious CNView CNView TNMView TNINext CN

Line 1509 - Commentary Note (CN) More Information

Notes for lines 1018-2022 ed. Eric Rasmussen
For explanation of sigla, such as jen, see the editions bib.
1509 {Player} < 1. Play>. Anon he finds him, 2.2.468
1773 gent
gent
Anon he finds him] Gentleman (ed. 1773): “There is great force in this description; and, though the play exhibited by these itinerants, is certainly a mock tragedy, we cannot think the above speech any way burlesque, though bad speakers often make it such, by vile utterance.”
1796 goethe
goethe <5:6:182> The very talented prompter is going to get the part of the actor who recites Pyrrhus. “he reads excellently. I have never heard anyone read better. And </p.182 > he really can respect the dividing line between declamation and emotionally charged recitation.”
“That’s it,” said Wilhelm. “That’s what we need. What a stroke of luck! We now have the actor who can recite the passage about the rugged Pyrrhus. . . . I would certainly have been very unhappy if that particular passage had been omitted; it would have crippled the play. . . . Shakespeare introduces this group of actors with a double purpose. First: the man who declaims the speech about the death of Priam with so much emotion, deeply moves Prince Hamlet. He pricks the conscience of the vacillating youth, and so this scene becomes the prelude to the play within the play, which makes such a deep impression on the king. Hamlet is put to shame by an actor who becomes so caught up in the sorrow of a fictitious personage, and conceives the idea of ‘catching the conscience’ of his stepfather the king by this means. What a marvelous monologues that is which concludes the second act! What joy it is to recite: [quotes from “O! what a rogue and peasant slave am I [end] . . . That he should weep for her?’] </p. 183>
1808 schlegel
schlegel
Anon he finds him] Schlegel (1808, rpt. 1846, pp. 406-7): “As one example of the many niceties of Shakespeare which have never been understood, I may allude to the style in which the player’s speech about Hecuba is conceived. It has been the subject of much controversy among the commentators, whether this was borrowed by Shakespeare from himself or from another, and whether, in the praise of the piece of which it is supposed to be a part, he was speaking seriously, or merely meant to ridicule the tragical bombast of his contemporaries. It seems never to have occured to them that this speech must not be judged by itself, but in connexion with the place where it is introduced. To distinguish it in the play itself as dramatic poetry, it was necessary that it should rise above the dignified poetry of the former in the same proportion that generally theatrical elevation soars above simple nature. Hence Shakespeare has composed the play in Hamlet altogether in sententious rhymes full of antitheses. But this solemn and measured tone did not suit a speech in which violent emotion ought to prevail, and the poet has no other expedient than the one of which he made choice: overcharging </p. 406><p. 407>the pathos. The language of the speech in question is certainly falsely emphatical; but yet this fault is so mixed up with true grandeur, that a player practised in artificially calling forth in himself the emotion he is imitating, may certainly be carried away by it. Besides, it will hardly be believed that Shakspeare knew so little of his art, as not to be aware that a tragedy in which Æneas had to make a lengthy epic relation of a transaction that happened so long before as the destruction of Troy, could neither be dramatical nor theatrical.”
1885 macd
macd
1509-12 MacDonald (ed. 1885): “—with an old man’s under-reaching blows—till his arm is so jarred by a missed blow, that he cannot raise his sword again.”
1509