Commentary notes (CN):

1. SMALL CAPS Indicate editions. Notes for each commentator are divided into three parts:

In the 1st two lines of a record, when the name of the source text (the siglum) is printed in SMALL CAPS, the comment comes from an EDITION; when it is in normal font, it is derived from a book, article, ms. record or other source. We occasionally use small caps for ms. sources and for works related to editions. See bibliographies for complete information (in process).

2. How comments are related to predecessors' comments. In the second line of a record, a label "without attribution" indicates that a prior writer made the same or a similar point; such similarities do not usually indicate plagiarism because many writers do not, as a practice, indicate the sources of their glosses. We provide the designation ("standard") to indicate a gloss in common use. We use ≈ for "equivalent to" and = for "exactly alike."

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. Click here for more information about browsing the entries and here for more information about the special symbols used in Hamletworks. Click the question mark icon above to remove this help message.

1679 Dryden

Dryden

1533-7, 1545-59 Dryden (1679, apud Vickers, 1974, 1:264-5), <p. 264> referring to the work of “some other Poet, ”quoted in Hamlet: “What a pudder is here kept in raising the expression of trifling thoughts. Would not a man have thought that the Poet had been bound Prentice to a Wheel-wright, for his first Rant? and had follow’d a Ragman, for the clout and blanket, in the second? Fortune is painted on a wheel; and therefore the writer in a rage, will have Poetical Justice done upon every member of that Engin: after this execution, he bowls the Nave downhill, from Heaven, to the Fiends: (an unreasonable long mark a man would think;} ’tis well there are no solid Orbs to stop it in the way, or no Element of fire to consume it: but when it came to the earth, it must be monstrous heavy, to break ground as low as to the Center. His making milch the burning eyes of Heaven was a pretty tollerable flight too; and I think no man ever drew milk out of eyes before him: yet to make the wonder greater, these eyes were burning. Such a sight indeed were enough to have rais’d passion in the Gods, but to excuse the effects of it, he tells you perhaps they did </p. 264> <p. 265> not see it. Wise men would be glad to find a little sence couch’d under all those pompous words; for Bombast is commonly the delight of that Audience, which loves Poetry, but understands it not: and as commonly has been the practice of those Writers, who not being able to infuse a natural passion into the mind, have made it their business to ply the ears, and to stun their Judges by the noise. But Shakespeare does not often thus [. . .]. Ed. note: Dryden does not consider the dramatic purpose of the player’s recitation.

Dryden continues to explain his position: he does not object to any expression in its proper place, fitting the emotion. He does object to a false stone masquerading as diamond, to “an extravagant thought, instead of a sublime one;” to “roaring madness instead of vehemence” etc. </p. 265> <p. 266> He praises Sh. in saying that if he “were stript of all the Bombast in his passions, and dress’d in the most vulgar words, we should find the beauties of his thoughts remaining; if his embroideries were burnt down, there would still be silver at the bottom of the melting-pot: [. . .] ,” but he warns those who try to emulate him, including himself in the warning, comparing any who try to “a dwarf within our Giants cloaths.” Sh. portrays “manly passions”--friendship better than love. He calls him a “Master” and says he had a kinder soul than Fletcher, whom he describes as a “Limb of Shakespeare.”

“Shakespeare had a Universal mind, which comprehended all Characters and Passions [. . .].”

Dryden concludes by saying that Aristotle and Horace are excellent only because they follow nature; </p. 266> <p. 267> they are to be heeded not because they have written but only because what they have written is true and useful. </p. 267> [Sig. A2v-b2v].

1747+ mtheo4

mtheo4: Warburton

1533 (Manuscript notes in a copy of theo4, sig. H2): “I think with Warburton that this scene tho’ raised in diction, was seriously intended. He had not cleared his fancy of Fortune’s wheel, but soon after repeats the image in all its detail. ‘or tis a massie wheele, / Fixt on the sommit of the highest mount, / To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things / Are mortist and adjoin’d, which, when it falls, / Each small annenment, pettie consequence, / Attends the boisterous ruine.’”

1885 macd

macd

1533 MacDonald (ed. 1885): “Is not the rest of this speech very plainly Shakspere’s.”

1993 Lupton & Reinhard

Lupton & Reinhard

1533-7 Lupton & Reinhard (1993, pp. 100-2, 106): <p. 100>“An apostrophe to Fortune follows the death of Priam: [quotes 1533-7]. The Player’s allegorical address aligns Senecan tragedy with the medieval de casibus tradition, which narrates the endless turns of Fortune’s wheel. It is no accident that this figure is feminine: she is the ‘strumpet Fortune,’ referred to in the same scene in all her monstrous bodily specificity. The passage is </p. 101><p. 102> doubly ‘projective’: as invocation, in projects, in the cinematographic sense, the presence of an absent, mythic being; as invective, it expels, throws out, or pro-jects this scapegoated emblem of historical catastrophe, an allegorical analogue to the exclusion of Phaedra that ends Seneca’s drama.” </p. 102>

Continues in 1540

<p. 106> “In Hamlet, the Senecan is cast out as a discourse of maternal excess (‘Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune!’), a specular division between Hamlet and its theatrical other, which returns as a figure of paternal anger and filial guilt (the doubled roles of Pyrrhus, the Ghost). . . . ” </p. 106>