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Line 2644 - 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.

2644 Ros. Take you me for a spunge my Lord?	4.2.14

1818-9 mclr2

mclr2

2644-50 Coleridge (ms. notes 1819 in Ayscough, ed. 1807; rpt. Coleridge, 1998, 12.4:856): “Hamlet’s madness is made to consist in the full utterance of all the thoughts that had past thro’ his mind before—in telling home truths.”

1870 rug1

rug1: Voltaire, Suetonius analogues

2644 a sponge] Moberly (ed. 1870): “Thus Voltaire quarreled direfully with his royal friend, Frederic the Great, on hearing that the king had spoken of him as a squeezed orange. Suetonius, in his life of Vespasian, c. 16, ascribes the original authorship of the ‘sponge’ comparison to this emperor.”

1873 rug2

rug2 = rug1 +

2644 a spunge] Moberley (ed. 1873): “Thus Voltaire quarrelled direfully with his royal friend, Frederic the Great, on hearing that the king had spoken of him as a squeezed orange. Suetonius, in his life of Vespasian, c. 16, ascribes the original authorship of the ‘sponge’ comparison to this emperor. ‘Procuratorum rapacissimis pro spongiis dicebatur uti; quos et siccos madefaceret, et exprimeret madentes.’”

1939 kit2

kit2: cald (Suetonius analogue), Andrewes, Mabbe

2644 Kittredge (ed. 1939): “Rosencrantz appears to understnad sponge in the literal sense, regarding Hamlet’s words as mere madness. Hamlet explains. The figure (as Caldecott notes) is derived from a passage in Suetonius (Vespasian, 16): ‘Creditur etiam procuratorum rapacissimorum quemque ad ampliora officia ex industria solitus promovere, quo locupletiores mox condemnaret; quibus quidem vulgo pro spongiis dicebatur uti, quod quasi et siccos madefaceret et exprimeret umentes.’ Cf Andrewes, Sermon at Saint Mary’s Hospital, 1688 (Oxford ed., 1841-1843, V, 23,24): ‘A practice it hath been . . . to use wealthy citizens as spunges, to roll them up and down in moisture till they be full, and then to wring all out of them again’; Mabbe, The Rogue (ed. Tudor Translations, ii, 34): ‘Your scandalous and offensive persons, whom we properly compare unto Sponges, who what they sucke in one place, have it wrung from them in another.’”

1947 cln2

cln2 = Wilson

2644 Take . . . spunge] Rylands (ed. 1947): “‘The notion of sycophants and extortioners as a monarch’s sponges is a commonplace of the time which derives from Suetonius (Vespasian, c. 16). Vespasian deliberately bestowed high offices upon rapacious persons ‘so that they common talk was he used them as sponges, letting them soak when they were dry and squeezing them out when they were wet” ’ (Dover Wilson).”

1958 mun

mun: Jonson analogue

2644-50 Take you . . . againe.] Munro (ed. 1958): “A similar passage on a Sponge is to be found in Jonson’s Poetaster (1601), 4.3.104-107 (Jonson, iv p. 269).”