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.

1881 hud3

hud3

2459-60 let vertue . . . fire] Hudson (ed. 1881): “Another instance like that of note 11; there being a confusion of the fire which is indeed the life of virtue with that which consumes her. For her own clearly refers to virtue; else the words in her own fire are much worse than useless, as having no effect but to clog or cloud the meaning; and if, as some do, we take them as referring to youth, we then have the poor platitude, ‘to the fire of youth let virtue be as wax, and melt in the fire of youth.’ Now virtue’s own fire can hardly mean the fire that consumes virtue. But there is, in the moral sense, a fire that cleanses and preserves, and there is also a fire that corrupts and destroys; and the text involves a verbal identification of the two. So that we have here a very pregnant note of the Poet’s, or of Hamlet’s, ethical creed. For virtue is not a cold, calculating thing: she is a passion, or she is truly nothing: she must have her altar, and her vestal fire ever burning there, else she will die: as the author of Ecce Homo observes, ‘No heart is pure that is not passionate; no virtue is safe that is not enthusiastic.’ And the generous, or, if you please, the romantic, fire of young enthusiasm is truly the vestal flame in and by which virtue lives. But the case is indeed well nigh desperate, when impurity usurps the passion that rightly belongs to purity, and when virtue perishes by the fire of her own altar. And the very pith of Hamlet’s censure is, that the sacred fire of noble passion, which burns so savingly in youth,—a fire kindled and fed with the idea of moral beauty;—that this fire has, in his mother’s matron age, inverted itself into the unholy and destructive fire of lust.—Several persons have snapped me rather sharply for taking this view of the text; but perhaps there are some things in Sh., and in Nature, which they have yet to learn. See vol. iv. page 30, note 14.”

1935 ev2

ev2

2459-62 Boas (ed. 1935): “Do not let virtue reprove the passionate impulses of youth when we see age giving way to them as freely, and making its riper faculties the tools of its desires.”

1980 pen2

pen2

2459-60 be as wax . . . fire] Spencer (ed. 1980): “The image is probably of a stick of sealing-wax, which is ignited and then nearly inverted so that drops of the melting wax fall from it.”

1982 ard2

ard2: xrefs.

2459-60 To flaming youth . . . fire] Jenkins (ed. 1982): “This passage, with its suggestion of what may be expected of youth, does much to explain Hamlet’s attitude to Ophelia. Cf. [3.1.102-114, 3.1.134-149 (1758-70, 1790-1805)]. The comparison of virtue succumbing to the flames of youth with wax consuming itself in its own flame, though it no doubt adds intensity, gives a less than perfect analogy. But cf. [4.7.114-5 (3112+1-3112+2)].”

2006 ard3q2

ard3q2

2459-60 To. . . fire] Thompson & Taylor (ed. 2006): “i.e. chastity (virtue) will be like wax for young people (who are naturally more sensual) and will melt in its own heat. Hamlet’s language and tone here again recall the advice of Laertes and Polonius to Ophelia in 1.3.”