3586 SD Enter a Courtier] Stubbs (1736, pp. 38-9) : <p. 38> “The Scene of the Fop Osrick is certainly intended as a Satire upon the young Courtiers of those days, and is humorously express’d, but is, I think, improper for Tragedy.

“Hamlet’s feeling, as it were, a Presage in his own Breast, of the Misfortune impending from his accepting Laertes’s Challenge, is beautiful; and we are to note, that our Author in several of his Plays, has brought in the chief Personages as having a sort of prophetick Idea of their Death); as in Romeo and Juliet . It was ( I doubt not) the Opinion of the Age he lived in.

“Laertes’s Death, and the Queen’s, are truly poetical Justice, and very naturally brought about; although I do not conceive it to be so easy to change Rapiers in a Scuffle, without knowing it at the Time. </p. 38> <p. 39> The Death of the Queen is particularly according to the strictest Rules of Justice, for she loses her Life by the Villainy of the very Person, who had been the Cause of all her Crimes.” </p.39> [this latter paragraph relates to TLN 3777ff; why Stubbs puts it in this note is beyond me]

3586 Enter a courtier] Gentleman (1770, I:30): <p. 30> “Ostrick is a whimsical mushroom of fancy, and tho’ Shakespeare presents his audience with a danish beau, he took the constituent parts from English court-buterflies of his days, and even furnishes him with the equivocal punning stile, which took its rise and fashion from that second Solomon, James the first, whose pedantry and hatred of witches were equally conspicuous.”</p. 30>

3586 Enter a courtier] Gentleman (apud Bell, ed. 1773) : “This fopling, whose character, as well as business, we dislike, may be sufficiently supported by smartness of figure, pertness of delivery, and affectedness of gesticulation; Mr. Garrick has rejected him indeed, as Shakespeare says he speaks an infinite deal of nothing.”

3586-3648 Strachey (1848, pp. 98-9): <p. 98>“As the text usually stands, perhaps it might be questioned how far Hamlet’s demeanour towards Osric deserves the character of ‘fine gentlemanly manners.’ But it appears that in the Folio all that part of the dialogue in which Hamlet banters Osric so openly as to confound him, and make him conscious that he is being quizzed, is omitted ; and it may therefore not unreasonably be asked whether the passages omitted were not struck out by Shakspeare himself (though he certainly wrote them) because his severer judgment told him that he had let his love of fun go too far—that though every word is appropriate to Hamlet’s wit, if he had given way to it, yet that he would have restrained it under all the circumstances, not to offend poor Osric.*

<n><p. 98>“*At Osric’s speech:—Sir, here is newly come to court, Laertes-Stevens says, "This and the following fourteen speeches are omitted in the Folio, which only retains in their place, Sir, you are not ignorant of what excellence Laeries is at his weapon." The modern Editors, lefore Mr. Knight, always made the Quartos the foundation of their text, putting in any additional passages that were to be found in the Folio, and adopting the emendations which it supplied to misprints or other errors in the former. This they did, some supposing that the Quartos, being published in Shakspeare’s life time, were the genuine text, and that most at least of the alterations in the Folio, were the work of his friends; and others (as Dr. Johnson) believing that the alterations were Shakspeare’s own, but that they were usually for the worse, because made when the original train of thought and feeling was no longer present to his mind. Mr. Knight has taken the opposite course, of reprinting the Folio, restoring from the Quartos the omitted passages; he maintaining, that the Folio is the more authentic text :—that is, that the alterations from the Quartos were made by Shakspeare himself, and that he knew best what should be altered and how. But if so, we should have a still more perfect text, if we boldly omitted all that the Folio omits,—removing all the additional passages of the Quartos from the text to the notes, there to be preserved as fragmentary beauties of Shakspeare. If on comparing a Play in the Quartos with the same in the Folio, it is found that the latter has been printed from a copy of the former, (as shown by the reproduction of typographical errors,) and yet contains additions and alterations which bear intrinsic evidence of being Shakspeare’s own, and if we consequently infer that the publishers of the Folio either had a Quarto copy corrected by Shakspeare’s own hand, or else made the corrections themselves, by collating the Plays printed in his life with</p. 98><p.99> the manuscripts he left behind him:—then should we not hesitate to restore anything which he had struck out? Mr. Knight does profess to adopt this principle, but he seems afraid (as who would not be) to carry it out when the omission is important. Mr. Collier returns to the old view and method of forming a text; but he does not appear to me to have made out the soundness of his position. If we should ever have a critic, who unites the philosophical acumen of Coleridge with the black-letter learning, and plodding attention to details, of Malone and Steevens, he may solve this hitherto inextricable puzzle, and we may have a far more perfect text than we have at present. Meanwhile, without disparaging the labours of the eminent editors of the present day, it is to be wished that they had given all the variations, (not omitting the misprints common, or not common, to both editions,) and also the conjectural readings, universally though often silently adopted from Theobald and others. If they have done this, it is not in the precise and formal manner in which a Greek or Latin classic is edited,”</p. 99></n>

3586 Enter a Courtier] Delius (ed. 1854) : “Die Qs. bezeichnen ihn nur als Höfling: Enter a Courtier. Q.A. [Q1] hat: Enter a Braggart Gentleman, wie auch in Love’s labour’s lost der in derselben manierirten Hofsprache sich ausdruckende Armado als Braggart in den Qs. bezeichnet wird.” [ “The Qq refer to him only as a courtier. Q.A.[Q1] has: Enter a Braggart gentleman , as also in [LLL 5.2.628(2589)] Love’s Labour’s Lost which in the same manner of court language will refer to the expressive Armado as a Braggart in the Qq.” ]

3586 Enter a Courtier] Ramsay (1856, p. 118): <p. 118><n>* “In the scene with Osric [3586ff] Hamlet’s gentlemanly manners, as well as the superior grandeur of his philosophy, shine conspicuous, the lofty condescension of his conscious superiority, and his good natured playfulness forming a fine contrast to Horatio’s impatient and almost pettish remarks to that courtier.” </n></p. 118>

3586 Enter a Courtier] Elze (ed. 1857, 252): <p. 252>"So die fs. QB folgg lesen: Enter a Courtier; QA: Enter a Bragart Gentleman, wie ((nach Delius)) auch in Love’s Labour’s Lost der in derselben gezierten Hofsprache sich ausdrückende Armado als Braggart bezeichnet wird. Im Texte (9§228. 232. 236)), sowie in der Bühnenweisung: ’Enter Osrick’ in §. 238. Enthaltgen QB folgg. gleichfalls den namen dieses Höflings; StR schreibt ihn jedoch ((mit Ausnahme der letzten Stelle?)) Ostricke. Über das gleichzeitige Stück Marshal Oserecke s. Einleitung Xxx." ["Enter Osrick]] So the Ff. Q2ff rad: Enter a Courtier; Q1: Enter a Bragart Gentleman, as ((according to Delius)) even was represented in [LLL] in the selfsame affected courtly speech Armado expressed himself as a braggart. In the text (§228. 232. 236.)), as so in the stage direction: ’Enter Osrick’ in § 238 Q2ff contain likewise the name of the courtier; St$ writes however him Ostricke ((with the exception of the last passage)). Concerning the contemporary play Marshall Oserecke, see introduction XXX"].

[Ed: This seems to refer to a play by Heywood entered in the Stationers’ Register called marshall Oserecke, which was entered in 1597 and later and which be responsible for the name Ostricke.]

3586 Enter a Courtier]Lloyd (1858, sig. [2R2v]- sig. [R3r]): sig. [2R2v] “I presume, again, that Coleridge was serious when he spoke of Hamlet’s fine gentlemanly manners with Osric; but he would have been nearer, though not close to the truth, had his terms been ironical, or compounded into the more equivocal word ‘fine-gentlemanly.’ The waterfly Osric lies under the suspicion of complicity in the treachery of the King and Laertes with the foils, though Shakspeare has not thought it worth while to render the crime definite, or to condescend to punish it; he embodies, however, at least whatever is most frivolous and contemptible in the courtier and chamberlain, and continues into the last act the motives of the departed Polonius and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, which brought out before so admirably the contrast between the tastes, the nature of Hamlet, and the swarm,—marsh-born., miasma-nourished, that are around him. Nothing certainly can be more unroyal, or, for the position of a prince aspiring to royalty, more impolitic than his betrayal of consciousness or disdain for the falsehood and frivolity of etiquette and the unmixed selfishness lying below courtly manners. It is not thus that ceremony is handled by potentates and aspirants, who are aware that they are for the most part but ceremonies themselves, and may not long remain that, if the fact gets wind and is talked about. But it is by so much as Hamlet is recalcitrant against he habitudes of his position that he gains dignity, and interests our affections as a man. As the world goes—for that matter it goes now as it always went—the arts and habits that make up the specific manners of the gentleman have come to mean little less than cool dexterity in offensiveness in one direction, balanced by efficient self-seeking complaisance int he other, and there is probably no rarer wild bird than your gentleman of gentlemanly feelings. But Hamlet baits and perplexes and satirizes the qualities that are really base, </sig. [2R2v]> <sig. [R3r]> independently of relative position, and turns with fundamental sincerity and geniality of character to familiar intercourse with friends and fellow-students, to genuine enjoyment and encouragement of struggling art in right of his own critical taste, to pregnant colloquy incognito with grave-diggers, and observation of social movement alongall its intersecting tracks. Hamlet assuredly is something better than a prince and courtier-scholar; soldier as he is, he is in sympathy with that best democracy, of which Novalis said that Christianity is the base, as it is the highest fact in the rights of man.’” </sig. [R3r]>.

3586 Enter a Courtier]

3586 Marshall (1875, pp. 102-03): <p. 102> “The next scene is one of the most charming pieces of high comedy which Shakespeare has left us; and those are very superficial critics who talk of the slovenliness of the last act, for the elaborate finish of this scene, at least, cannot be denied. It barely exists in the first version of 1603 [Q1]. Shakspeare was too great an artist not to know that any interruption to the action at this point would not be tolerated, unless it were of so interesting a nature as to reconcile the audience to the delay. Some pause is necessary before the scheme of </p. 102> <p. 103>the King and Laertes can be carrried out. Nowhere is the irony, which pervades this great work, more remarkable than in the contrivance of introudcing what the spectators know is a treacherous design to assassinate Hamlet with a genuinely comic prelude. Affection was never more happily ridiculed than it is in this mincing periphrastic courtier; nor was satire ever more effective and good-humoured than is that of Hamlet, whose wit shines now with greatr brillancy than ever, though he is heavy and is standing unconsciously on the brink of his own grave.” </p. 103>

3586 a Courtier] Browne (apud Furness, ed. 1877): “Osric]] This was a name well known at the time. Henslowe’s company performed an Oseryck in 1597, perhaps Heywood’s lost play of Marshal Osrick.”

[Ed: This is the The Athenæum, 29 July 1876.]

3586 Enter a Courtier] Gervinus (1877, p. 566): <p. 566>“The often-admired scene in which he ridicules the young Osric, a man with all the gloss of superficial culture, who, an accomplice in laertes’ scheme, challenges Hamlet to the fatal fight with the same polite formalities as, to use Hamlet’s words, ‘he did comply with his dug, before he sucked it,’ is a scene highly expressive of Hamlet’s character. It places him in glaring contrast to this ‘breed’ of people on whom ‘the drossy age dotes,’ who get ‘the tune of the time and outward habit of encounter,’ without the reality of true culture; who have gathered ‘a kind of yesty collection, which carries them through and through the most fan’d and winnowed opinions,’ until a point of trial is met, where their wit vanishes and ‘the bubbles are out.’ As Hamlet here appears opposed to the false culture of the age, he is equally vehement against its lack of refinement. He will know nothing of the brawls and revels of the generation; the intemperance of his uncle, the quarrels of Fortinbras, are far from his nature. Thus in the teask assigned to him an inner conflict perplexes him; the strife of a higher law with the natural law of vengeance, the struggle of fine moral feelings with the instinct of nature.” </p. 566>

3586 Enter a Courtier]Halliwell (1879, p. 31): <p. 31> “The name of Osric, which occurs in the edition of 1603 [Q1], was perhaps not in the old play, but one found by Shakespeare in his favourite Holinshed.” </p. 31>

3499 Enter Hamlet and Horatio] Marshall (ed. 1879, Preface, p. ix-xii): <p.ix> “The second scene of this act, in which Osric appears, is supposed to take place out of door, in the garden of the Castle. It is singular that neither Capel, Rowe, nor Theobald, when they placed this scene in ‘A Hall of the Palace,’ should have remarked on the inappropriateness of Hamlet’s request to Osric to put his hat on:— ‘Put your bonnet to its right use, ‘tis for the head’ [3598].—a request which he repeats [3609]; surely Hamlet would scarcely have addressed such words to one below him in rank, except in the open air. Indeed the whole passage seems to point to the same conclusion:— ‘Osric. I think . . . . Hamlet. No, believe . . is northerly’ (3599-3601].

“On the other hand, Hamlet says further on:— </p.ix><p.x> ‘Sir, I will . . .brought,’ &c. [3638-40].

“But we may suppose that Hamlet, in saying this, indicates by a gesture the Castle which is close to them, and that he means to say he will attend the King in the hall there.

“There is no doubt that this and the subsequent scene were originally played as one, and in the same place; and that this vague expression Hall was used to express a kind of vestibule open on one side to the air. But on the modern stage a change of scene is imperatively necessary; and it is better to be true to the spirit rather than to the letter of the text. <n.> Any one who will examine carefully the whole of this scene in the two first quartos and in the first folio, will see that there are many difficulties in arranging it for the stage. The first quarto (1603), as is often the case, affords the most valuable assistance in determining what was the original intention of Shakespeare. The Gentleman who in that edition of the play takes the place of Osric, says to Hamlet:— ‘My lord, presently, the king, and her majesty, With the rest of the best judgement in the Court, Are comming downe into the outward pallace.’ To which Hamlet answers:— ‘Goe tell his majestie, I will attend him.’ The outward pallace would exactly answer to such a hall as has been described above. But later in the same scene we find Hamlet says:— ‘—theres predestiuate prouidence In the fall of a sparrow; heere comes the King.’ (See Allen’s Reprint,’ the Devonshire Hamlets.’ pp. 94, 95.)

In the second quarto (1604), the text is the same, with the exception of one or two words, as in the ordinary editions of Shakespeare; but it differs from that of the first filio, for the latter omits altogether lines 182 to 193 inclusive; or from where a Lord enters to where, as marked in the modern editions, he goes out. It is </n.></p.x><p.xi><n.>worth while to observe what this Lord says, addressing Hamlet:— ‘—his majesty commended . . . in the hall,” &c. [3657+2-3657+3]. And again— ‘The king . . . coming down’ [3657+9].

In the second quarto there is no [Exit Lord] marked, so that he probably remained on the scene till the king and queen came on.

At the end of Hamlet’s speech commencing, ‘Not a whit, we defie augury,’ &c. we find in the second quarto the words ‘Let be,’ indicating probably that as he saw the king and court approaching, he did not wish to continue the conversation with Horatio. In the second quarto the stage direction which follows is— ‘A table prepard, Trumpets, Drums and Officers with Cushions, King, Queene, and all the state, Foiles, daggers, and Laertes.’

In the first folio it is— ‘Enter King, Queene, Laertes and Lords, with other Attendants with Foyles, and Gauntlets, a Table and Flagons of Wine on it.’

In the first quart (1603) it is simply— ‘Enter King, Queene, Laertes, Lords.’

From the direction of the second quarto it would seem as if there were a change of scene; from that in the folio, as if the same scene were continued, a conclusion which is confirmed by Hamlet’s words:— ‘I will walk here in the hall.’

On the other hand, the evidence of the first quarto is very con- </n.></p.xi><p.xii><n.> flicting, and that of the second quarto doubtful; for it is to be observed that Hamlet does not say ‘in this hall,’ nor does the lord, who comes from the king, say to Hamlet, Osric ‘brings back’ to the king ‘that you attend hilm here,’ but ‘in the hall.’ The omission of the word Exeunt, at the end of Hamlet’s speech, would seem, however, to decide the question, as far as the old copies are concerned, in favour of the continuance of the same scene.” </n.> The last scene </p.x><p.xi> takes place in such a ‘hall’ or ‘vestibule’ of the palace as has been alluded to above. Through the arches at the back of the stage are seen the trees of what may be supposed to be the ‘orchard’ in which the good king Hamlet met his death at his brother’s hand. The spot is a fitting one for the execution of </p.xi><p.xii> that vengeance so long deferred, and the contrast between the soft green foliage of early summer and the deepening gloom of the tragedy is not inconsistent with that terrible irony of fate which is one of the leading characteristics of the story of Hamlet.” </p.xii>

3586 Enter a Courtier] Elze (ed. 1882): “The name intended by the poet for this Courtier results indeed from §228, where the Lord says: his Maiestie commended him to you by young Osricke. [Q2] spells the name Ostricke, Ostrick, and Osrick; [F1] uniformly: Osricke, in [Q1] the name is not contained at all.”

3586 MacDonald (ed. 1885): “One of the sort that would gather to such a king—of the same kind as Rosincrance and Guildensterne.

“In the 1st Q. ‘Enter a Bragart Gentleman.’”

3586 Macquoid (apud Shak. Eng., 1916, 2:105): <p. 105>“The long doublet and hose frequently ornamented with ribbings, spots, and stripes were suggestive of insects, and the wearer, with his winged triangular cloak and bee-headed bonnet, must have been incharacter with the court drones who hummed and buzzed round their queen in 1585. Shakespeare marks this feature when he makes Hamlet say of Osric: ‘Dost this water-fly?’</p. 105>

3586 SD] Wilson (ed. 1934): “SD Osric, a diminutive and fantastical courtier, enters the hall, wearing a winged doublet and a hat of latest fashion]] For ‘diminutive’ v. note l. 84 [3588]. The ‘winged doublet’ (i.e. with projections from the shoulders), then much in the fashion (v. N.E.D. ‘wing’ 8), is suggested by ‘water-fly’ (l. 84) and ‘lapwing’ (l. 186) [3649], while an absurd hat (cf. ‘shell on his head’ ll. 186-87) provides much of the business during the dialogue. Cf. Sh. Eng. ii. 105.”

3586 Enter a Courtier] Kittredge (ed. 1939): “Compare the language of Emulo in Dekker, Chettle, and Haughton’s Patient Grissil (1599).”

3586 a Courtier] Spencer (ed. 1980): “Osrick]] The first form of the name in Q2 is ‘Ostricke’, and this is used for his speech headings in the duel scene. In view of the many references to birds in this episode, it is tempting to suppose that ‘Ostrick’ was Shakespeare’s original intention. But at lines [3838], and F has ‘Osricke’ ((‘Osr.’)) throughout. Q1 has ‘Enter a Bragart Gentleman’, which indicates how he appeared on the stage. Hamlet’s easy wit in ragging poor Osrick, showing a mind free from vacillation and anxiety, confirms the change of mood revealed in the earlier part of the scene.”

3586 Enter a Courtier] Edwards (ed. 1985): “‘young Osricke’ ((F)) is only ‘a Courtier’ in Q2. F brings forward his name from [3657+3 and 3715] below ((where Q2 gives it as ‘young Ostricke)).”

3586ff Hibbard (ed. 1987): “This encounter between Hamlet and Osric is reminiscent of that between Woodstock and a foppish Courtier in the anonymous play Woodstock (9c. 1592)0. See Woodstock, ed. A.P. Rossiter ((1946)), 3.2.197-227.”