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.

1929 trav

trav

185 our selues] Travers (ed. 1929) paraphrases: “without forgetting ourselves,’ i.e. ourself [see 3043]. Travers considers the possibility that the king means with ourselves to suggest, subtly, himself and the queen. But “everything in this first speech of Claudius, whether vocabulary, phrasing, syntax, or prosody, makes for volume . . . even more than for real weight. This king knows how to roar.”

1939 kit2

kit2

185 our selues] Kittredge (ed. 1939): "myself and all of you. A suggestion that the marriage was not just a personal affair, but an advantage to the whole state, If Claudius had meant ’myself’ only, he would have said ’ourself.’ "

1953 Joseph

Joseph

186 sometime sister] Joseph (1953, p. 54): The king “has managed to marry his brother’s widow without stimulating in his courtiers their normal reaction to incest; and yet in this case, too, he does not attempt to hide what he has done, he merely contrives to make the world mistake the real quality of his actions: [quotes 186, 188, 192-4].

“It is the measure of his uncle’s success that Hamlet, the only person to react normally to an abnormal situation, is himself made to seem abnormal.. . . and in the behaviour of Gertrude is so much love and radiance that we can be forgiven for not realizing that this is a woman who buried a beloved husband in frenzied grief a few short weeks ago. Shakespeare has presented the facts in such a way that our own normal reactions are dulled, and if we recognize later how strange it was that we had no comprehension of the true facts at this moment, we become more aware of the evil emanating from Claudius as part of the poet’s fundamental conception of the play. ”

Ed. note: In many of his suppositions, Joseph is imagining a performance of the play, one possibility among many. The king is not always, in performance, so sympathetic, the counsellors so accepting (see Kozinstev), nor Gertrude so happy and loving (contrast Zeffirelli’s and Wayda’s Gertrudes).

1980 pen2

pen2

185 Spencer (ed. 1980): “This goes closely with think on him and explains wisest.”

1982 ard2

ard2: kit2 +

185 our selues] Jenkins (ed. 1982): “Though Claudius is no doubt making it appear that the marriage concerns not merely himself but the whole state (Kittredge), it is not true that ’ourselves’ could not refer to the monarch alone. Cf. R2 I.i.16, III.iii.127”