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Line 2251 - Commentary Note (CN)

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.”

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Notes for lines 2023-2950 ed. Frank N. Clary

For explanation of sigla, such as jen, see the editions bib.

2251 Pol. It is backt like a Wezell.	3.2.380

1723- mtby2

mtby2

2251 backt] Thirlby (1723-): “Why was this chang’d [by Pope to black]? Without doubt back’d is true reading. D black . . . [appended to Pope’s note:] What then? It is back’d not black in all the edd. that I have seen. D black.”

1733- mtby3

mtby3: pope

2251 backt] Thirlby (1733-): “adds Q & D [Q2 & Q3] wezel so that all the authority for Mr Pope’s reading is the word black in D.”

mtby3: pope

2251 Wezell] Thirlby (1733-), re Theobald’s Ouzle note: “You might have told us too that ouzle is Mr Pope’s conjecture. As you have [lagg’d?] yr matters together, most of your readers, I fancy. will take it for your own.”

1747-1753 mtby4

mtby4

2251 backt] Thirlby (1747-53): “back’d must be restored too.”

1773 gent

gent: see 2250 on Hamlet’s teasing Polonius (2250-2)

1774 capn

capn: Cym. //

2251 backt] Capell (1774,1:1:Glossary, back’d): “(Cym. 125,1. H. 76,23) mounted on Back: also,—shap’d in Back.”

1778 v1778

v1778: see 2250 for back’d (2251)

1785 v1785

v1785: see 2250 for back’d (2251).

1790 mal

mal: see 2250 for back’d (2251).

1793 v1793

v1793: see 2250 for back’d (2251)

1803 v1803

v1803: see 2250 for backed.

1813 v1813

v1813: see 2250 for backed (2251)

1821 v1821

v1821: see 2250 for backed (2251)

1857 fieb

fieb: mal

2251 backt] Fiebig (ed. 1857): “Thus the quarto, 1604, and the folio. In a more modern quarto, that of 1611, back’d, the original reading, was corrupted into black. Perhaps in the original edition the words camel and weasel were shuffled or of their places. The poet might have intended the dialogue to proceed thus: ‘Ham. Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in the shape of a weasel?/ ‘Pol. By the mass, and ‘tis like a weasel, indeed./’Ham. Methinks, it is like a camel./’Pol. It is back’d like a camel. The protuberant back of a camel seems more to resemble a cloud, that the back of a weasel does. Thus Malone; but does not Hamlet all the better and more ridicule the subservience and pliability of the old courtier by inducing him to speak of the back of a weasel, after having mentioned the camel, as if the back were a distinguishing part of the former and not of the latter?”

1877 v1877

v1877: see 2250 for theo1, Heath, v1778

2251 backt like a Wezell] Furness (ed. 1877): “Theobald preferred ouzle to ‘weasel,’ because, first, a ‘weasel’ is not black (to read ‘back’d’ only avoids the absurdity of giving a false color to the ‘weasel’); secondly, by reading ‘ouzle,’ there is humor in comparing the same cloud to a Beast, a Bird, and a Fish. Heath: The resemblance of a cloud to an animal is generally concluded from its shape, not its color. ‘Weasel,’ then, is the true reading, and Polonius, in his eagerness to humor a madman, unluckily pitches upon the very portion of a weasel in which it most differs from a camel. Steevens: Tollet observes that we might read, ‘it is beck’d like a weasel,’ i.e. weasel-snouted. So, in Holinshed’s Description of England, p. i72: ‘if he be wesell-becked.’ Quarles uses this term of reproach in his Virgin Widow: ‘Go you weazel-snouted, addle-pated,’ &c. Tollet adds, that Milton in his Lycidas calls a promontory beaked, i.e. prominent like the beak of a bird or a ship.”

1882 elze

elze ≈ Tollet, pope, Murphy

2251 Elze (ed. 1882): “The meaning is: The back of the cloud has no bunch like that of a camel, but it is sleek like that of a weasel. Beck’d like a weasel, Tollet conj.; black like an ouzle, Pope. The passage, as altered by Pope, is alluded to in Arthur Murphy’s Apprentice (Works, London, 1786, II, 56): he made me open the shop-door for him: he stopt on the threshold, and looked as if he saw something, and pointed at one of the clouds, and asked if it was like an ouzel. Wingate. Like an ouzel? Wounds! what’s an ouzel?”

1891 dtn

dtn

2251 backt like a Wezell] Deighton (ed. 1891): “shaped like the back of a weasel.”

1899 ard1

ard1: xref.

2251 Dowden (ed. 1899): See n. [3.2.379 (2250)].

1934 cam3

cam3

2251 backt like a Wezell] Wilson (ed. 1934): “Particularly absurd after ‘like a camel.’”

1987 oxf4

oxf4

2251 backt like a Wezell] Hibbard (ed. 1987): “It would be hard to find a back less like a camel’s than a weasel’s is.”

1993 dent

dent

2251 It is backt] ANDREWs (ed. 1993): “It has a back.”

2006 ard3q2

ard3q2: AC //

2251 Thompson & Taylor (ed. 2006): “Its back is like that of a weasel. Either Hamlet enjoys contradicting himself and exposing Polonius’ insincerity, since a weasel is very unlike a camel, or we assume that the supposed cloud is changing very rapidly, like the one evoked by Antony at AC 4.14.1-11. If the former, Hamlet plays the same trick on Osric in 5.2.”