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.

1860 mhal1

mhal1: marks 2050-2055 as “p[ractically] i[dentical]

1861 wh1

wh1

3453 Leaping into the graue Anon. (ms. notes in White, ed. 1861) : “cf. Acad. 79. p. 32, 55, 304, 345.”

1883 wh2

wh2

3453 Hamlet the Dane] White (ed. 1883): “Hamlet here asserts himself as rightful King of Denmark.”

1882 elze2

elze2

3453 Hamlet the Dane] Elze (ed. 1882): “Modern editors generally combine these words with the following speech of Laertes [3454], although it seems evident that they should be placed in an interjectional line by themselves, whilst the two hemistichs The devill take thy soule and Thou pray’st not well form a regular blank verse.”

3453 SD Hamlet leaps into the Grave] Elze (ed. 1882): Hamlet leapes in & [Q1 SD] opposite the line: ‘Whats he that coniures so‘ [CLN 2049], which is wrongly given to Laertes; om. [Q2] and [F1].”

1885 macd

macd

3453 MacDonald (ed. 1885): “This fine speech is yet spoken in the character of madman, which Hamlet puts on once more the moment he has to appear before the king. Its poetry and dignity belong to Hamlet’s feeling; its extravagance to his assumed insanity. It must be remembered that death is a small affair to Hamlet beside his mother’s life, and that the death of Ophelia may even be some consolation to him.

“In the Folio, a few lines back, Laertes leaps into the grave. There is no such direction in the Q. In neither is Hamlet said to leap into the grave; only the 1st Q. so directs. It is a stage-business that must please the common actor of Hamlet; but there is nothing in the text any more than in the margin of Folio or Quarto to justify it, and it would but for the horror of it be ludicrous. The coffin is supposed to be in the grave: must Laertes jump down upon it, followed by Hamlet, and the two fight and trample over the body?

“Yet I take the ‘Leaps in the grave’ to be an action intended for Laertes by the Poet. His ‘Hold off the earth a while,’ does not necessarily imply that the body is already in the grave. He has before said, ‘Lay her i’th’ earth’: then it was not in the grave. It is just about to be lowered, when, with that cry of ‘Hold off the earth a while,’ he jumps into the grave, and taking the corpse, on a bier at the side of it, in his arms, calls to the spectators to pile a mountain on them—in the wild speech that brings out Hamlet. The quiet dignity of Hamlet’s speech does not comport with his jumping into the grave: Laertes comes out of the grave, and flies at Hamlet’s throat. So, at least, I would have the thing acted.

“There is, however, nothing in the text to show that Laertes comes out of the grave, and if the managers insist on the traditional mode, I would suggest that the grave be represented much larger. In Mr. Jewitt’s book on Grave-Mounds, I read of a ‘female skeleton in a grave six feet deep, ten feet long, and eight feet wide.’ Such a grave would give room for both beside the body, and dismiss the hideousness of the common representation.”

1914 Stewart

Stewart

3453 Stewart (1914, pp. 224-5): <p. 224>“True, Laertes’ emotion is not of the deepest. It is his nature to love display, to be melodramatic. Various critics have noted this with excellent discrimination. What are we then to conclude? —That Hamlet felt real emotion, true sorrow over her death; and that he jumped into the grave out of mere disdain and resentment of Laertes’ exaggerated expression of </p. 224><jp. 2256> love? Are we to infer that this is a sort of aesthetic protest over a matter of bad taste? Current interpretations of the incident would leave us in just that state of mind. But this is not. the point. Hamlet acted out of pure pain. This is the whole point of the tragedy. It was a pain that always haunted him, but which arose under conditions to a poignancy that was unbearable. There is in his life neither self-pity nor a cherishing of grief, but simple torture. It is a tragedy not of blood but of pain. In it death and blood are of the slightest significance. If we may attribute to it any moral as a whole it is that very frequently in this world it is the best that suffer the most.”</p. 225>

3453 Stewart (1914, pp. 228-9): <p. 228>“Finally at the grave scene, the climax, he has gone through it all and he can feel no emotion at all. He makes a terrible effort to be a man among men, to feel the soft sorrow that he feels a human being should experience; but it is no use, his great effort, an extreme writhing under the pain of his condition, is a mere abortion of grief. He has run the gamut; he had sorrowed for Ophelia before. And we weep for the dead but once.

“This solves the whole question of Ophelia, the seeming inconsistency of which is so much at the bottom of the ‘mystery" of Hamlet.’ So long as critics persist in looking at Ophelia ‘in the round,’ seeing her charming points, reasoning that Hamlet loved her to the time of her death and using this as an explanation of the strange grave scene, they will never solve the "mystery" of Hamlet in the world.

It will not do to follow the modern method of looking at the characters "in the round." If you want to understand Hamlet you have got to look at things from Hamlet’s standpoint. And this, not in the light of a priori theory but of the facts themselves just as Shakespeare presents them. In every case Shakespeare will explain himself utterly, in every scene and passage, to entire consistency; it is only necessary for us to furnish the sympathetic insight and feeling. Hamlet is not a mystery. To say that it must be so, for all time, because ‘life is a mystery’ is entirely beside the point. The same might be said of some other play just as well, so long as it represents life. Anyone can write a play which is a mystery, inscrutable and inconsistent; but great men do not write mysteries. They elucidate. And while I have not space, while engaged upon cruxes, to go fully into Hamlet, I believe that to anyone who has a real desire to understand the play I have here furnished the most valuable first step.”</p. 228> </p. 229> The reader will now ask— and it is a fair question— if Hamlet has been incapacitated to have emotion, how is it that he weeps after the interview with his mother and the killing of Polonius? She certainly reports that he wept; and we have no reason to doubt it, for he probably did; and most feelingly. Although I have not space in the midst of these cruxes to write an extended analysis of Hamlet, I can hardly leave this point unexplained and incomplete.” </p. 229>

1939 kit2

kit2

3453 Hamlet the Dane] See n. 3452.

1938 parc

parc

3453 SD Hamlet leaps into the Grave] Parrott (ed. 1938): “[This SD] found in most editions, is not in the authentic texts. It is an old stage practice, recently abandoned.”

1974 evns1

evns1

3453 the Dane] Evans (ed. 1974): “This title normally signifies the King.”

1980 pen2

pen2 ≈ standard

3453 Hamlet the Dane]

1982 ard2

ard2 ≈ standard

3453 Hamlet the Dane] Jenkins (ed. 1982): “Cf. [1.1.16 (21), 1.2.44 (224)].”

1984 chal

chal : ard2 without attribution

3453 Hamlet the Dane]

1985 cam4

cam4 ≈

3453 Hamlet the Dane] Edwards (ed. 1985): “Hamlet asserts his title to the throne; see note to 1.1.15.”

1987 oxf4

oxf4

3453 Hamlet the Dane] see n. 3452