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.

1639- mWright

mWright

3178 Wright (ms. notes, 1639-): “[cites 3178] (speaking of one drownd).”

1843- mlewes

mlewes

3178-9 water . . . tears] Lewes (ms. notes in Knight, ed. 1843): “This is surely a wretched conceit in the midst of grief!”

I have answers to this also; Laertes like his father is a phrase maker. And someone once said how well Sh captures the banality of expressions of real grief. Malcolm’s response to the news of his father’s death could be an instance.

1860 mHal1

mHal1 : marks CLN 1896-7 as “nearly i[dentical” to 3176, 78

1889 Tomlinson

Tomlinson : Ulrici [n. 3189]

3178-84 Tomlinson (1889, pp. 13-14): <p. 13> “It is in the absence of Laertes that Polonius is killed and Ophelia goes mad and is drowned. Laertes being informed of his father’s death, returns home for the purpose of avenging it, and then he has to bear the additional stroke of his sister’s death. So also Hamlet, by boarding the pirates’ vessel, while the cowardly courtiers allow their ship to drift away, is conveyed back to Denmark, when, as if by chance, he enters the churchyard at the very time when Ophelia’s grave is being prepared. This leads, in </p. 13> <p. 14>the most natural, but at the same time in the most unexpected manner, to the encounter between Hamlet and Laertes.

“Such incidents as the above belong to what Ulrici [see Ulrici, n. 3189] very properly terms, ‘internal necessity,’ in the course of the dramatic development, which he sees reflected in every turn of the action, in all the characters, and in all the various parts of the whole, and he does not hesitate to place ‘this extremely involved and complicated tragedy by the grandest creations of the great poet; yet it has frequently enough been censured on account of supposed defective composition.’” </p. 14>

1931 crg1

crg1

3178-79 Too . . . teares] Craig (ed. 1931): “an illustration of the fact that puns were not inappropriate under any circumstance in Shakespeare’s time.”

1939 kit2

kit2

3178-84 Kittredge (ed. 1939): “This speech seemed far less artificial to Shakespeare’s contemporaries than it does to us, for such punning expressions had come to be natural in Elizabethan style and were by no means inconsistent with deep feeling.”

1951 crg2

crg2=crg1

3178-79 Too . . . teares]

1982 ard2

ard2

3178-79 Too . . . teares] Jenkins (ed. 1982): “Cf. for the conceit, [TN 2.1.26-8 (0000)], ‘She is drowned already, sir, with salt water, though I seem to drown her remembrance again with more’.”