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Line 156 - Commentary Note (CN)

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.”

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Notes for lines 0-1017 ed. Bernice W. Kliman

For explanation of sigla, such as jen, see the editions bib.

156 Mar. It faded on the crowing of the Cock.	1.1.157

1709 Tatler

Anon. [Steele? Hughes?]

156-63 It faded . . . time] Anon. (Tatler No. 111, 24 Dec. 1709; 2:169-70): <p. 169> “ . . . [A]ccording to his agreeable Wildness of Imagination, he has wrought a Country Tradition into a beautiful Piece of Poetry, In the Tragedy of Hamlet, where the Ghost vanishes upon the Cock’s Crowing, he takes Occasion to mention its Crowing all Hours of the Night about Christmas Time, and to insinuate a Kind of religious Veneration for that Season. [he quotes not precisely as in Rowe, but with additional upper case and other immaterial variations.]

“This admirable Author, as well as the best and greatest Men of all Ages, and of all Nations, seems to have had his Mind throughly seasoned with Religion, as is evident by many Passages in his Plays, that would not be suffered by </p. 169><p. 170> a modern Audience; and are therefore certain Instances, that the Age he lived in had a much greater Sense of Virtue than the present.” </p. 170>

Anon. goes on to deplore the present ‘Looseness of Principles” &c. The note suggests that the author did not distinguish between the credulous Marcellus and the somewhat skeptical if kindly Horatio “So have I heard and do in part believe it.”

1723- mtby2

mtby2

156 Thirlby (1723-): “Some perhaps may think this line belongs to the foregoing speech. I do not think so. Some perhaps may be apt [to call: these words should be there and are not; therefore, this comment seems to have been copied from elsewhere, from his Rowe perhaps] it an interpolation that crept out of the margin, put there in the way of explanation, into the text. I do not think that neither.”

1744 han1

han1

156 fade] Hanmer (ed. 1743, 6: Glossary): “to disappear, to vanish”

1778 v1778

v1778: crowing of the cock

156 crowing of the Cock] Steevens (ed. 1778): “ This is a very ancient superstition. Philostratus.giving an account of the apparition of Achilles’ shade to Apollonius Tyaneus, says, that it vanished with a little glimmer as soon as the cock crowed. Vit. Apol. iv. 16.”

1783 mals2

mals2 = han1 without attribution + in magenta underlined

156 faded] Malone (1783, p. 55): “Faded has here its original sense; it vanished. Vado. Lat. So in Spenser’s [F.Q. 1.5.15] : ‘He stands amazed how he thence should fade.’ That our author uses the word in this sense, appears from some subsequent lines: [quotes 411-3]. Malone.”

1784 ays1

ays1: v1778 sentence 1

156 crowing of the Cock]

1785 v1785

v1785 = v1778; Farmer see TLN 162

156 crowing of the Cock] Reed

1790 mal

mal = malsi; Steevens on Philostratus

156 faded]

mal = v1785

156 crowing of the Cock]

1791- rann

rann: standard

156 faded] Rann (ed. 1791-): “vanished.”

1793 v1793

v1793 = mal

156 crowing of the Cock]

1803 v1803

v1803 = v1793

156 crowing of the Cock]

1807 Douce

Douce: See 153-4

1813 v1813

v1813 = v1803

156 crowing of the Cock]

1819 cald1

cald1: Steevens +

156 faded] Caldecott (ed. 1819): “Its shadowy appearance lost all of its distinctness: it melted into thin air: passed away, vanished, flitted. Vado is to flow or go, ‘as a river doth,’ says Littleton in his Dictionary, ‘Hinc Angl. to vade or fade.’ “Thy form’s divine, no fading, vading flower.’ Braithwaite’s Strappado for the Divell, 12mo, 1515, p. 53. ‘O darknesse, fade thy way from hence.’ —Barnabe Googe’s Palengenius’s Zodiake of Life, 12mo.” [then Steevens on Vit. Apoll.]

1819 mclr

mclr

156 Cock] Coleridge (ms. notes, 1819, in Ayscough, ed. 1807) refers to the fact that Sh. is able to elevate with the lines following “a thing almost mean by it’s familiarity”

1819 Coleridge

Coleridge = mclr2

156 The Cock . . . time] Coleridge (1819, rpt. 1987, 5.2:296): “No Addison more careful to be poetical in diction than Shakespear in providing the grounds and sources of its propriety.—But how to elevate a thing almost mean by its familiarity, young Poets may learn in the Cock-crow.”

1821 v1821

v1821 = v1813

156 crowing of the Cock]

1825 European Magazine

"Gunthio" pseudonym = Collier?

156 faded] "Gunthio" (1825, p. 341): “The writer of the article in the London Magazine objects to the reading of [Q1]—’And then it [the ghost] faded, like a guilty thing.’ That of the common version [Q2], started, is doubtless preferable; but is not the former countenanced by what Marcellus observes immediately after?—’It faded on the crowing of the cocke.’ In reply to this, it may perhaps be urged, that when Horatio subsequently describes the apparition to Hamlet, he says, ’it shrunk in haste away . . . ’;” See TLN 412.

1826 sing1

sing1= Steevens in v1813; Douce minus (exact quotation), +

156 Singer (ed. 1826): “There is a Hymn of Prudentius, and another of St. Ambrose, in which it is mentioned; and there are some lines in the latter very much resembling Horatio’s speech. Mr. Douce has given them in his Illustrations of Shakspeare.”

1832 cald2

cald2 = cald1 +

156 faded] Caldecott (ed. 1832): [after flitted] “Jupiter, addressing the ghosts in [Cym. 5.4.106 (3142)] says, ‘Rise and fade.’

cald2

156 cock] Caldecott (ed. 1832): ‘See ‘the first cock’ [Lr. 3.4.116 (1896)] Edg.”

1843- mLewes

mlewes; Steevens without attribution

156 faded] Lewes (ms. notes in Knight, ed. 1843): “How consonant with all superstitious belief. This dissipation of terrors by the approach of dawn!”

1848 Strachey

Strachey

156-67 Strachey (1848, p. 27): “We are brought out of the cold night into the warm sunshine, and we realize, in this lyrical movement, that harmony of our feelings which, as I have observed before, it was one of the objects of the Chorus to produce in the Greek Tragedy.”

1854 del2

del2 standard

156 faded] Delius (ed. 1854): “to fade = verschwinden, eine jetzt veraltete Bedeutung.” [To fade means to disappear, a now obsolete meaning.]

1856 hud1

hud1 ≈ sing1 and see also 154; nothing original here

156 crowing of the Cock] Hudson (ed. 1856): “This is a very ancient superstition. Philostratus, giving an account of the apparition of Achilles’ shade to Apollonius of Tyranna, says, ‘it vanished with a little gleam as soon as the cock crowed.’ There is a hymn of Prudentius, and another of St. Ambrose, in which it is mentioned; and there are some lines in the latter very much resembling Horatio’s speech.”

1856 sing2

sing2 = sing1 (subst.): Except sing2 spells Shakespeare

156

1858 Lloyd

Lloyd

156-63 Lloyd (1858, p. [13]): “ Marcellus, of less recondite acquirements [than Horatio], follows up [Horatio’s comments 149-55] with a contemporary and living superstition:—[quotes 156-63].”

1865 hal

hal = cald2

156 faded]

hal = cald2

156 cock]

check to make sure that hal has two notes.

1868 c&mc

c&mc: Steevens (probably by way of v1821) without attribution

156 Clarke & Clarke (ed. 1868): “That the crowing of the cock was a signal for the disappearance of ghosts is a superstition of very ancient date.”

1872 hud2

hud2 = hud1 (minus Philostratus)

156

1872 hud2

hud2

156-74 Hudson (ed. 1872): “These last three speeches are admirably conceived. The speakers are in a highly kindled state: when the Ghost vanishes, their terror presently subsides into an inspiration of the finest quality, and their intense excitement, as it passes off, blazes up in a subdued and pious rapture of poetry.”

1877 v1877

v1877 = Coleridge (but at TLN 149); Hudson as in 1880 at 173

156

1881 hud3

hud3 = hud2

156-74

1883 macd

macd

156-63 MacDonald (ed. 1883): “This line [156] said thoughtfully—as the text of the observations following it. From the eerie discomfort of their position, Marcellus takes refuge in the thought of the Saviour’s birth into the haunted world, bringing sweet law, restraint, and health.”

Ed. note: macd misses the point he had started to make earlier [127], about the doubtful nature of the Ghost. If only evil beings fade at the crowing of the cock, then what does that make the Ghost? I see some ≈ between macd and hud3.

1912 dtn3

dtn3: standard + // Tmp. 4.1.155 w/ quot.

156 faded]

dtn3

156 on . . . Cock] Deighton (ed. 1912): “when the cock crowed.”

1987 oxf4

oxf4 ≈ hud without attribution; ≈ macd without attribution

156-63 Hibbard (ed. 1987): “These words appropriately introduce a marvelous diminuendo as the terrors of the night fade away with the assertion of consoling superstitions and the coming of daylight. No source has yet been found for the belief that as Christmas approaches the cock crows all night long.”

1994 Kerrigan

Kerrigan ≈ oxf4 on belief, without attribution

156 crowing of the Cock] Kerrigan (Perfection, 43) finds no reference in folk lore to the supposed story that Marcellus speaks of about the cock crowing all night long. One must distinguish between Horatio’s story (about the things of the night disappearing with the cock crow) and Marcellus’s, about the cock crowing all night long, making night wholesome for the season of Jesus’s birth.