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Line 2769 - 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.

2769 Oph. How should I your true loue know from another one,	4.5.24

1839 knt1 (nd)

knt1: Dr. Arnold

2769-70 Knight (ed. [1839] nd): “The music, still sung in the character of Ophelia, to the fragments of songs in 4.5, is supposed to be the same, or nearly so, that was used in Shakspere’s time, and thence transmitted to us by tradition. When Dury-lane theatre was destroyed by fire, in 1812, the copy of these songs suffered the fate of the whole musical library; but Dr. Arnold noted down the airs from Mrs. Jordan’s recollection of them, and the present three stanzas, as well as the two beginning—‘And will he not come again?’ are from this collection.”

1857 fieb

fieb

2769-70 Fiebig (ed. 1857): “There is no part of this play, in its representation on the stage, more pathetic than this scene; which proceeds from the utter insensibility Ophelia has to her own misfortunes.”

1864 Kellogg

Kellogg

2769-70 Kellogg (1864, p. 12): “This stanza seems to have been suggested by some vague thought of her lover, but the dominant thought is of her dead father, and is expressed in the stanza which follows.”

1890 irv2

irv2: v1877 + magenta underlined

2769 Symons (Irving & Marshall, ed. 1890): “The traditional music to this fragment is printed in Chappell’s Popular Music of the Olden Time, vol. i. p. 236, and in Furness’ Variorum Ed. vol. i. p. 330. Rossetti took this stanza for the first verse of a beautiful little lyric (very modern, however( which he called ‘An old Song Ended’ (Poems, 1870, p. 175).”

1891 dtn

dtn

2769 know from] Deighton (ed. 1891): “distinguish from.”

1904 ver

ver ≈ v1877 (abbrev.) + magenta underlined

2769 How should I your true love know?] Verity (ed. 1904): “The traditional stage-music of this ballad is supposed to be the same, or nearly, as that used in Sh’s time. It would naturally be passed on from one generation of actors to another. (F.)

“The ballad-snatches in this scene are all of unknown authorship. That is the great characteristic of ballads. Indeed, the composition of ancient ballad-literature is probably ‘communal’ to a great extent, not simply individual.”

1934 cam3

cam3: xref.

2769-70 How should I etc.] Wilson (ed. 1934): “This first stanza was not likely to ease the Queen’s ‘sick soul.’ None of Oph.’s ballad-snatches, except that at [4.5187 (2938)], are known elsewhere.”

1939 kit2

kit2: Coleridge

2769-2948 Kittredge (ed. 1939): “The fragments that Ophelia sings appears to be bits that would be familiar to the Elizabethan audience, but only three lines (23, 24, 187) have been found that antedate the play. Coleridge rightly bids us note ‘the conjunction here of these two thoughts that had never subsisted in conjunction, the love for Hamlet and her filial love, and the guileless floating on the surface of her pure imagination of the cautions so lately expressed and the fears not too delicately avowed by her father and brother concerning the dangers to which her honour lay exposed’ (Shakespeare Criticism, ed. Raysor, I, 33, 34).”

kit2: Walsingham song analogue

2769 Kittredge (ed. 1939): “These lines resemble the Walsingham song, popular in Shakespeare’s time. Cf. the version preserved in the Percy MS.: ‘As yee came from the holy Land Of Walsingham, Mett you not with my true loue By the way as you came? How shold I know your true loue, That haue mett many a one As I came from the holy Land, That haue come, that haue gone?’1”

<n> “1See Bishop Percy’s Folio Manuscript, ed. Hales and Furnivall, III, 465 Ff,; Delaney’s Garland of Good Will, Percy Society ed., p. 111; Beaumont and Fletcher, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, ii, 8; Child, English and Scottish Ballads, IV (1857), 191 ff.; Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time, I, 236, 237; The Pepys Ballads, ed. Rollins, II, 22, and VIII, 9.” </n>

kit2

2769 your true loue] Kittredge (ed. 1939): “your affianced lover.”

1972 Latham

Latham: TNK //

2769-70 Latham (1972, p. 146): “Ophelia’s madness consists chiefly in the mistake of one man for another. In the TNK it is closely interwoven with the Plot. In Sh. we only find it in the snatch beginning: ‘And how should I your true love know, &c.’ This is in favour of the madness of both the Ophelia of Sh. and the Jailer’s Daughter of Fletcher having been drawn form a common source—possibly the present play. This, however, we can scarcely assume without knowing more that we do of the old play of ‘Palamon and Arcite.’”

1974 evns1

evns1 ≈ kit (Walsingham analogue)

2769 How . . . one] Evans (ed. 1974): “These lines resemble a passage in a n earlier ballad beginning ‘As you came from the holy land / Of Walsingham.’ Probably all the song fragments sung by Ophelia were familiar to the Globe audience, but only one other line (187) is from a ballad still extant.”

1980 pen2

pen2: Sternfeld

2769-82 How. . . showers] Spencer (ed. 1980): “In these snatches of ballads Ophelia seems to be confusing recollections of her lost lover with her dead father. They hint that the cause of her madness is not only her father’s death but her estrangement from Hamlet and his banishment. Shakespeare does not reveal whether she knows that Hamlet killed her father. Her song to the Queen about your true-love and another one may seem to hint at the difference between her first and second husbands. The next two stanzas remind the Queen of the death of King Hamlet as well as of Polonius. For the music of Ophelia’s songs see F.W. Sternfeld’s Music in Shakespearean Tragedy (London, 1963).”

1997 evns2

evns2 = evns1

2006 ard3q2

ard3q2: Jenkins, Hibbard

2769-82 Thompson & Taylor (ed. 2006): “This song is a version of a popular ballad much quoted elsewhere (see Jenkins). Its theme of the woman bereft of her lover seems to indicate that her father’s death is not the only cause of Ophelia’s distress; in fact she alternates between lover and father. Jenkins argues that Q1’s lute would be incongruous as an accompaniment to this and Ophelia’s other songs but Hibbard claims that this is an argument for her using it, since ’only a mad woman would think of doing so’. The incongruity is probably lost on modern audiences precisely because of their familiarity with the lute’s appearance in this scene.”