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.

1780 mals

mals : see n. 3502

1790 mal

mal : mals (see n. 3502; modified) + magenta underlined

3503ff Sir, in my heart . . . ] Malone (ed. 1790) : “So, in Troilus and Cressida : ‘Within my soul there doth commence a sight, Of this strange nature,’ &c.

“The Hystorie of Hamblet, bl. let. furnished our author with the scheme of sending the prince to England, and with most of the circumstances described in this scene: ‘(After the death of Polonius) ‘ Fengon (the king in the present play) could not content himselfe, but still his mind gave him that the foole (Hamlet) would play him some trick of legerdemaine. And in that conceit, seeking to be rid of him, determined to find the meanes to doe it by the aid of a stranger, making the king of England minister of his massacrous resolution; to whom he purposed to send him, and by letters desire him to put him to death.’ Now, to beare him company, were assigned two of Fengon’s faithful ministers, bearing letters ingraved in wood, that contained Hamlet’s death, in such sort as he had advertised the king of England. But the subtil Danish prince (being at sea), whilst his companions slept, having read the letters, and knowing his uncle’s great treason, with the wicked and villainous mindes of the two courtiers that led him to the slaughter, raced out the letters that concerned his death, and instead thereof graved others, with commission to the king of England to hang his two companions; and not content to turn the death they had devised against him, upon their own neckes, wrote further, that king Fengon willed him to give his daughter to Hamblet in marriage.’Hyst of Hamb. sig. G2.

“From this narrative it appears that the faithful ministers of Fengon were not unacquainted with the import of the letters they bore. Shakspeare, who has followed the story pretty closely, probably meant to describe their representatives, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, as equally guilty; as confederating with the king to deprive Hamlet of his life. So that his procuring their execution, though certainly not absolutely necessary to his own safety, does not appear to have been a wanton and unprovoked cruelty, as Mr. Steevens has supposed in his very ingenious observations on the general character and conduct of the prince throughout this piece. See [3850: ed. 1773, 10: 412] Vol. X. p. 412.

“In the conclusion of his drama the poet has entirely deviated from the fabulous history, which in other places he has frequently followed.

“After Hamlet’s arrival in England (for no sea-fight is mentioned), ‘the king (says The Hystory of Hamblet ) admiring the young prince—gave him his daughter in marriage, according to the counterfeit letters by him devised; and the next day caused the two servants of Fengon to be executed, to satisfy as he thought the king’s desire.’ Hyst. of Hamb. Ibid.

“Hamlet, however, returned to Denmark, without marrying the king of England’s daughter, who, it should seem, had only been betrothed to him. When he arrived in his native country, he made the courtiers drunk, and having burnt them to death, by setting fire to the banqueting-room wherein they sat, he went into Fengon’s chamber, and killed him, ‘giving him (says the relater) such a violent blowe upon the chine of the necke, that he cut his head clean from the shoulders.’ Ibid sig. F3

“He is afterwards said to have been crowned king of Denmark.

I shall only add that this tremendous stroke might have been alledged by the advocates for Dr. Warburton’s alteration of naue into nape , in a contested passage in the first act of Macbeth , if the original reading had not been established beyond a doubt by Mr. Steevens, in his supplemental note to Vol. X [p. 358 in v1785 edition] late edition. “ MALONE”

[Ed: Malone adds the Tro. headnote to this note moved from 3502 in ed. 1790, adding a bit to the start of the note, as well as excising the closing paragraph.]

1793 v1793

v1793 = v1785 ; mal +

3503ff Sir . . . sleep] Steevens (ed. 1793) : “I apprehend that a critick and a juryman are bound to form their opinions on what they see and hear in the cause before them, and not to be influenced by extraneous particulars unsupported by legal evidence in open court. I persist in observing that from Shakespeare’s drama no proofs of the guilt of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern can be collected. They may be convicted by the black letter history; but if the tragedy forbears to criminate, it has no right to sentence them. This is sufficient for the commentator’s purpose. It is not his office to interpret the plays of Shakspeare according to the novels on which they are founded, novels which the past sometimes followed, but as often materially deserted. Perhaps he never confined himself strictly to the plan of any one of his originals. His negligence of poetick justice is notorious; nor can we expect that he who was content to sacrifice the pious Ophelia, should have been more scrupulous about the worthless lives of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Therefore, I still assert that, in the tragedy before us, their deaths appear both wanton and unprovoked; and the critick, like Bayes, must have recourse to somewhat long before the beginning of this play, to justify the conduct of its hero. Steevens.”

1803 v1803

v1803 = v1793

3503ff Sir . . . sleep]

1807 Pye

Pye : v1803 ; see n. 3547-9

3503-4 Ham. Sir . . . sleepe] Pye (1807, p. 326) : <p. 326> “Steeven’s note on Malone’s observation respecting this fact in a preceding passage is insolent and impudent; and he is, as usual, positive in the wrong; there is not one word uttered by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern throughout the play that does not proclaim them to the most superficial observer as creatures of the king, purposely employed to betray Hamlet, their friend and fellow students; the brutal behavior of hamlet to Ophelia may be perhaps accounted for from Shakespeare thinking of the novel and / the history by Saxo Grammaticus; where I believe a young woman, from whom he took the idea of Ophelia, is employed to betray him. Comments on the Commentators, 8vo. 1807, p. 326.” </p. 326>

1813 v1813

v1813 = v1803

3503ff Sir . . . sleep]

1818 clrfr

The Friend

3503-65 Coleridge (Essay iv [Essays on the Principles of Method], The Third Landing-Place, or Essays Miscellaneous, The Friend, vol. 3, 1818; rpt. Coleridge, 1969, 4.1:451-3): <p.451>“METHOD, therefore, becomes natural to the mind which has been accustomed to contemplate not things only, or for their sake alone, but likewise and chiefly the relations of things, either their relations to each other, or to the observer, or to the state and apprehension of the hearers. To enumerate and analyze these relations, with the conditions under which alone they are discoverable, is to teach the science of Method.

“The enviable results of this science, when knowledge has been ripened into those habits which at once secure and evince its possession, can scarcely be exhibited more forcibly as well as more pleasingly, than by contrasting with the former extract from Shakespeare [[2H4 2.1.74-86]] the narration given by Hamlet to Horatio of the occurrences during his proposed transportation to England, and the events that interrupted his voyage.

[[C cites 3503-27]]</p. 451>

<p. 452> “Here the events, with the circumstances of time and place, are all stated with equal compression and rapidity, not one introduced which could have been omitted without injury to the intelligibility of the whole process. If any tendency is discoverable, as far as the mere facts are in question, it is the tendency to omission: and, accordingly, the reader will observe, that the attention of the narrator is called back to one material circumstance, which he was hurrying by, by a direct question from the friend to whom the story is communicated, ‘HOW WAS THIS SEALED?’ But by a trait which is indeed peculiarly characteristic of Hamlet’s mind, ever disposed to generalize, and meditative to excess (but which, with due abatement and reduction, is distinctive of every powerful and methodizing intellect), all the digressions and enlargements consist of reflections, truths, and principles of general and permanent interest, either directly expressed or disguised in playful satire. [[C cites 3532-65 I . . . opposits]] </p. 452>

<p.453>“It would, perhaps, be sufficient to remark of the preceding passage, in connection with the humorous specimen of narration,

Fermenting o’er with frothy circumstance,

in Henry IV.; that if overlooking the different value of the matter in each, we considered the form alone, we should find both immethodical; Hamlet from the excess, Mrs. Quickley from the want, of reflection and generalization; and that Method, therefore, must result from the due mean or balance between our passive impressions and the mind’s own re-action on the same.”</p.453>

[Ed: Rooke notes that the source of the quotation “Fermenting o’er with frothy]. circumstance” is “untraced.”

1819 cald1

cald1 : mal (Tro. // only) +

3503 -6 Sir, in my heart . . . knowe ] Caldecott (ed. 1819) : “Misgiving and distrust of ill practices against him, produced this struggle or agitation in his bosom, not so much on any personal consideration, as on that of his revenge being unsatisfied; and, should he by any impending chance be cut off, that his promise also, and his oath, would be unfulfilled.”

1821 v1821

v1821 = v1813

3503ff Sir . . . sleep]

1848 Strachey

Strachey

3503-3510 Strachey (1848, p. 91-2): <p. 91>“ In our former investigations of the progress of Hamlet’s own enquiry into the principles of his character and conduct, we found that he had come to the conclusion, first that his inaction was the consequence of his sense of moral responsibility, and dread of unknown consequences; and secondly, that this scrupu- lousness might easily run to excess ; and that when a man had once found reasonable ground for action, he should ponder the matter no further, but instantly proceed </p. 91> <p. 92> to act, shutting his eyes to the consequences.* But the practical difficulty remained, how to ascertain the right moment for ceasing to think, and beginning to act : the evil of doing wrong for want of previous thought, is as great as that of abstaining from doing right through excess of thought; and who, in practice, shall strike the balance, and give the command to act ? This secret too, Hamlet has been taught by the events of his late voyage. The bodily restlessness of a sleepless night, suddenly induced him to go to the cabin of Guildenstern and Rosencrantz, and take their dispatches to read. He had every reason to believe that they contained some evil design against himself, but it was the sudden spur of that bodily restlessness, and not a deliberate resolution, that caused him to take this step.”</p. 92>

<n><p. 92>“*As Lady Russell expresses it in her letter to I)ean Tillotson:—’ Pray do not turn this matter too much in your head; when one has once turned it every way, you know that more does but perplex, and one never sees the clearer for it.’" </p. 92></n>

1872 hud2

hud2

3504 That . . . sleepe] Hudson (ed. 1872): “Hamlet has from the first divined the King’s purpose in sending him to England. Since the close of the Play, when the King was ‘frighted with false fire,’ Hamlet knows that the King did indeed murder his father, and he also knows that the King suspects him of knowing it. Hence, on shipboard, he naturally has a vague, general apprehension of mischief, and this fills him with nervous curiosity as to the particular shape of danger which he is to encounter.”

1881 hud3

Hud3 ≈ hud2

3504 That . . . sleepe] Hudson (ed. 1881): “Hamlet has from the first divined the King’s purpose in sending him to England. Since the close of the interlude, when the King was ‘frighted with false fire,’ Hamlet knows that the King did indeed murder his father, and he also knows that the King suspects him of knowing it. Hence, on shipboard, he naturally has a vague, general apprehension of mischief, and this fills him with nervous curiosity as to the particular shape of danger which he is to encounter.”

1885 macd

macd

3504 That . . . sleepe] MacDonald (ed. 1885): “The Shaping Divinity was moving him.”

1964 Falconer

Falconer

3504 my thought . . . bilbo] Falconer (1964, p. 122): “ . . . He is nautical in the account of his voyage which he introduces with a reference to one of the customary punishments aboard a warship: ’methougtht I lay Worse than the mutines in the bilboes’ 5.2.5 ff. ’The punishment at the bilboes is when a delinquent is put in irons, or in a kind of stocks made for that purpose, the which are more or less heavy and pinching, as the quality of the offence is found to be, upon good proof’ [Nathaniel Boteler, Dialogues, p. 17]. ”

1980 pen2

pen2

3504-05 my . . . bilbo] Spencer (ed. 1980): “it seemed to me that I felt more uncomfortable in my bed than do mutineers in their iron fetters.”