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.

1857 fieb

fieb: xref.

2743+11 gaine . . . ground] Fiebig (ed. 1857): “A small particle, a parcel of land. See p. 159, 7 . [4.4.62 (2743+56).”

1875 Marshall

Marshall: Froude (Raleigh, Devereux exped.)

2743+11 little . . . ground] Marshall (1875, pp. 193-4): <p.193> “That Shakespeare intended to refer to some particular expedition in this passage I have not the slightest doubt; but, unfortunately, I have not been able to trace the source of this description. The particulars given are very remarkable; it was a little patch of </p.193><p.194> ground—not worth five ducats to farm—yet it was garrisoned by the Polack. I hoped to find the original of this unprofitable expedition in some of the ‘adventures’ undertaken by Sir Walter Raleigh, or by one of the Earls of Essex; but I have not succeeded to my own satisfaction. There are certain points of resemblance between the enterprise of Walter Devereux in 1573, the object of which was to conquer Ulster, or a portion of it, and this expedition of Fortinbras. An unfavorable critic might speak of the members of that adventurous body, of which Walter Devereux was the leader, as ‘a list of lawless resolutes’ without doing them any grievous wrong. Of the apparent value of the country which these brave butchers were to conquer, some idea may be formed from the description given by Froude (vol. x., page 554): ‘A few years before, Sir Henry Sidney’s progress through Ulster had been gravely compared to Alexander’s journey into Bactria. The central plains of Australia, the untrodden jungles of Borneo, or the still vacant spaces in our map of Africa, alone now on the globe’s surface represent districts as unknown and mysterious as the north-east angle of Ireland in the reign of Elizabeth . . . . Ulstor was a desert,’ &c. , &c.’

“One feels on reading this eloquent description that five ducats would have been a high rent to have paid for such a paradise; still the extent of it does not answer to the description in the text. In 1573 Shakespeare was only nine years old; in 1580, when Walter Raleigh joined Grey’s force in the attack upon the fort of Smerwick, in Dingle Bay, he was only sixteen: yet both events might have made some impression on his youthful memory. Smerwick, the wretched fort in which the unhappy Spaniards and Italian held out for two days against the English butchers, answers very well to ‘the Officer’s’ description of the place against which Fortinbras was leading his ‘lawless resolutes.’ It was ‘a very small neck of land joined to the shore by a bank of sand’ (Froude, vol. xi., page 224). It was garrisoned and was regularly besieged and taken by Grey and his followers; the use they made of their conquest is a matter of history; and let us hope few fouler stains rest on the English name. If I could positively identify either Walter Devereux’s expedition, or that of Grey, as the original which was suggested by Shakespeare’s description in the text, I should make a proviso, that it is not to be supposed, for one moment, that Fortinbras was guilty of the fiendish barbarities which both these blood-thirsty murderers practised.

“The whole of this scene (with the exception of Fortinbras’ short speech) has no parallel in the Quarto of 1603; it was evidently added by Shakespeare on the revision of the play, a circumstance which confirms me in the belief that he had some enterprise of that time in his mind.” </p.194>

1885 macd

macd: Shakespeare Lexicon + magenta underlined

2743+11 a little patch of ground] MacDonald (ed. 1885): “—probably a small outlying inland or coast-fortress, not far off, else why should Norway care about it at all? If the word ‘frontier’ has the meaning, as the Shakespeare Lexicon says, of ‘an outwork in fortification,’ its use two lines back would, taken figuratively, tend to support this.”

1891 dtn

dtn

2743+11 to gaine] Deighton (ed. 1891): “to make ourselves masters of.”

1934 cam3

cam3: Harrison, Pollard

2743+11 a little patch of ground] Wilson (ed. 1934): “From July 2, 1601 till the spring of 1602 the sand-dunes of Ostend were valiantly defended against the Spanish in many battles and with a great loss of life by an English force under Sir Francis Vere, which returned home on March 18. The siege actually continued until Sept. 1604, but the London public would only be interested in the earlier stages. There can be little doubt that Sh. is here alluding to these events, which points to the late summer or autumn of 1601 as the date for Hamlet, as we have it in Q2. v. G. B. Harrison, Last Elizabethan Journal, pp. 190-270 and Sh. at Work, pp. 279-81. The earliest news-pamphlet on Ostend was entered in the Stat. Reg. on Aug. 5, 1601, v. A. W. Pollard, Short Title Catalogue, Ostend.”

1936 cam3b

cam3b: Camden; xref.; TN //

2743+11 a little patch of ground] Wilson (ed. 1936): “The following sentences from Camden’s Elizabeth, describing the siege of Ostend, 1601, come close to Sh.’s words here and in [4.4.50-66 (2743+44-2743+60)] below:

“There was not in our age any siege and defence maintained with greater slaughter of men, nor continued longer. . . . For the most warlike souldiers of the Low Countreys, Spaine, England, France, Scotland and Italy, whilest they most eagerly contended for a barren plot of sand, had as it were one common sepulcher, but an eternall monument of their valour. The news-pamphlets, the number of which testifies to the public interest taken in the siege, all insist upon the terrific struggle, the magnitude of the sacrifice, the unexampled bravery of those taking part, and the insignificance and sterility of the little plot of sandy ground fought for. Perhaps the most interesting testimony is to be found in a volume of French poems on the siege, entitled Ostende, 1603 (B.M. press mark 1192. g. 6), of which the lines ‘Tout le subiect de ce siege hazardeux / N’est que ce champ infertile et poudreux’ give the key-note of the whole. That Sh. had himself read the earliest news-pamphlet (ent. S.R. Aug. 5, 1601) looks probable from its reference to a man ‘very miraculously saved . . . upon a piece of a mast’ in the sea outside the town, which seems to have suggested Sebastian’s escape in TN. [1.2.12-4 (62-64)].”

1947 cln2

cln2 : Wilson (apud Rylands)

2743+11 a little patch of ground ] Wilson (apud Rylands, ed. 1947): “‘From July 2, 1601 till the spring of 1602 the sand-dunes of Ostend were valiantly defended against the Spaniards in many battles and with great loss of life by an English force under Sir Francis Vere which returned home on March 18. There can be little doubt that Shakespeare is here alluding to those events’ (Dover Wilson).”

1982 ard2

ard2: Florio’s Montaigne analogue; Chambers (contra Dover Wilson)

2743+11-2743+19 Jenkins (ed. 1982): “Similar reflections occur more than once in Montaigne. He observes that we are ‘daily accustomed to see in our wars many thousands of foreign nations, for a very small sum of money to engage both their blood and life in quarrels wherein they are nothing interested’ (Florio, ii.23). Again, ‘What ruin did our last Duke of Burgundy run into, for the quarrel of a cartload of sheepskins?’ (iii.10). Hence, even if dates permitted, we could not, with Dover Wilson, suppose an allusion to the siege of Ostend (1601), referred to in Camden’s Annales as a contest ‘for a barren plot of sand’ (de sterili arena). In refutation see Chambers, Shakespearean Gleanings, pp. 70-5.”