3405-06 Elze (ed. 1857): "Woher rührt diese Fassung, die mit den ’verstümmelten Gebräuchen’ sehr wenig im einklang steht? QA hat: Enter King and Queene, Leartes and other Lordes, with a Priest after the coffin. StR: Enter King, Queen, Lartes and the corse. Wie lesen QB und FA? Statt des Priesters haben QB folgg. einen ’Doctor’.—Der Umstand, dass Horatio noch nicht von dem Tode der Ophelia unterrichtet ist, erklärt sich daraus, dass er gleich, nachdem er hamlets Brief erhalten hat, diesem entgegen gereist und eben erst mit ihm zurückgekehrt ist." ["From where moves this version, which stands very little in agreement with "the mutilated custom." Q1 has . . .; StR . . . How do Q2 and F1 read? In place of the preist, Q2ff has a "Doctor." The circumstance, that Horatio is till not informed of the death of Ophelia explains itself out of it that he immediately, after he had received Hamlet’s letter, journeyed to meet [him] and had only just returned with him."]

3405ff Miles (1870, 73): <p. 73>“Horatio is silent: apprehensive of mischief should Hamlet and Laertes meet: unable to tell his friend that Ophelia is dead [cites 3412-38].” </p. 73>

3405-06 Marshall (1875, pp. 95-6): <p. 95> “Hamlet’s moralisings are interrupted by the entrance of a funeral procession, in which are the King, Queen, and the courtiers. Here is another distraction to occupy his restless mind. It seems to me hard to conceive a more dramatic ‘situation,’ or a more pathetic incident than this: he has no idea whose the funeral is; even Lartes’ presence does not suggest to him that it may be Ophelia’s body which they follow ‘with such maimed rites.’ As I have pointed out before, Horatio could not have known of Ophelia’s death any more than Hamlet; but he ahd seen her in her pitiable, distracted state, and it would certainly seem that, if he had spoken of her at all to Hamlet, he had concealed the gravity of her affliction; otherwise the latter would surely have suspected that the funeral was hers. How deep a pathos there is in the perfect unconsciousness of Hamlet that every detail of this sad ceremony, at which he was looking as an uninterested spectator, touched so nearly the tenderest feelings of his heart—</p. 95> <p. 96>[3408-11] The way in which he mentions Laertes has, to the audience who know what has happened, something in it of satire which the speaker never intended—’That is Laertes—a very noble youth.’ It seems to me that at this point the actor generally loses an opportunity for the display of facial acting of the highest order. Hamlet and Horatio have retired out of sight of those who are taking part in the funeral ceremony, but not out of sight of the audience. Some actors I have seen cover their face with their cloaks, while others almost go off the stage; but surely Hamlet, immediately he hears the words, ‘Her obsequies,’ 7c., in answer to the demand of Laertes—’What ceremony else?’ would begin to listen with the closest attention; the fact that it was a woman’s funeral would strike him. A little further, when he hears the words—’Yet here she is allo’d her maiden crants, Her maiden strewments, &c.’ suspicion of the terrible truth would begin to dawn on him; his eyes would glance rapidly from face to face with a piercing look, his grasp of Horatio’s hand would tighten, his breathing become quicker and quicker, till at Laertes’ words—’A ministering angel shall my sister be,’ the dreadful certainty would burst upon him—it was his love’s half-honoured grave that lay open there before him, it was her sweet body on which that sad rain of flowers was falling; with a sob, half-suppressed, he would throw himself on Horatio’s breast, as the words come from him in a low moan of despair—’What, the fair Ophelia!’ the name he seemed to have loved best to call her. Perhaps these few words were the first full confession of his love he had ever made to this true and single-hearted friend; for even to him he never seems to have told the secret of this love, which, under the cruel repression that he exercised over it, was silently eating away his heart. It is but sound for a moment that he suffers himself to be overcome; the soundof Laertes’ voice, invoking curses on the head of him, ‘whose wicked </p. 96> <p. 97> deed’ had deprived the sweet maid of her ‘ingenious sense,’ rouses him; and as he sees he brother, half-mad with passion, leap into the grave; as he listens to that bombastic display of grief—’Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead, Till of this flat a mountain you have made To o’ertop old Pelion or the skyish head Of blue Olympus.’—when Hamlet sees and hears all this; he who loved this fair and sweet maiden with a love which was all the fiercer because it had to be crushed; he who had sacrificed this love and its object on the altar of a great purpose which was not, for all that cruel sacrifice, a whit nearer fulfilment; he who had torn the tender strings of his own heart, had broken hers, and shook her reason from its throne, and had done all this in vain;—what wonder is it that his soul is filled with bitterness, that the sight and sound of this brother’s outrageous grief maddens him, and thta he too leaps into the grave with the cry—’This is I, Hamlet the Dane.’” </p. 97>