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Line 257 - Commentary Note (CN)

Commentary notes (CN):

1. SMALL CAPS Indicate editions. Notes for each commentator are divided into three parts:

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

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

257 Ham. Seemes Maddam, nay it is, I know not seemes,	1.2.76

1770 Gentleman

Gentleman

257-67 Seemes . . . woe] Gentleman (1770, 1:375) admires the way that Hamlet catches “eagerly at the word seems used by his mother.” This and other features of his 1st scene contributing “to a happy commencement of his character.”

1772 SJC

Anon: Garrick

257-67 Seemes . . . woe] Anon. [Hic et Ubique] (St. James’s Chronicle no. 1717, 20/21 Feb. 1772): “Mr. G. in my Opinion, takes away from the Dignity, Solemnity and Manhood of the Character by giving a Kind of feminine Sorrow to it. The Son, though ever so tender, should not sink the Prince in his Grief. Besides, is not his a more confirmed Melancholy from the Conduct of his Mother, than from the immediate Bursting of Sorrow for his Father, who has been dead two Months.” Since Hamlet has, the reviewer goes on, within the feeling that passeth Show—“therefore the inward not external Exhibition of Sorrow must be the Guide to the Actor through the first scene.”

Ed. note: The writer could be Garrick’s friend Steevens.

1773 gent

gent

257-67 Seemes . . . woe] Gentleman (ed. 1773): “This reply is sensibly pathetic, and insinuates with strict truth, that the seeming is but a shadowy semblance of sorrow; substantial grief dwells in the heart.”

BWK: this note might go in 257, where the speech starts, or 267, where GENT puts it.

1784 Richardson

Richardson

257-67 Richardson (1784, rpt. 1812, p. 72): While Hamlet feels aversion for his uncle, he feels indignation towards his mother, on two accounts: “both from the merit of his father, and from the behavior of Gertrude. It is, therefore, vehement. But, as the circumstance of the times render it dangerous for him to discover his sentiments, and the real state of his mind, he governs them, as far as the ardour of his emotions allows him, and disguises their external symptoms. His indignation labours for utterance; and his reason strives to restrain it. He inveighs with keenness, but obliquely, against the insincerity of Gertrude’s sorrow; and, in an indirect, but stinging manner, opposes her duty to her actual conduct.”

1789 Anon.

Kemble?

257-66 Seemes, Maddam . . . ] Anon. [Kemble?] (1789, p. 6): “ . . . no audience can hear him make that stinging, though proper, reply to his mother, when she demands of him, ‘why, if death is common to all, he should mourn in so particular a manner for his deceased father,’ without feeling the strongest emotion of pity for the young Prince, and the keenest indignation against the wicked and unfeeling Queen. Mr. Kemble, indeed, in that speech, proves that he has ‘that within which passeth shew.’”

1874 Corson

Corson: F1, cam1 +

257 Seemes Maddam] Corson (1874, p. 9): “The [F1] ‘?’ represents the elocution again better than the ‘!’”

The again refers to 68.

1874 Malleson

Malleson contra Seeley

257- Malleson (1874, p. 487), replying to Seeley’s analysis of the character (see 333), asserts that Hamlet’s father’s death is as much on his mind as his mother’s quick marriage, as this speech shows.

Ed. note: However, it’s never Hamlet who says that his father’s death is what is on his mind. Gertrude and the king assume it because it suits them to do so. When he is alone, we hear what is on Hamlet’s mind—and it’s not his father’s death so much as it is his mother’s marriage.

1875 Marshall

Marshall

257-67 Marshall (1875, p. 18): “It is to be noted that while rebuking his mother, Hamlet never forgets the respect due to her in presence of the Court. . . .”

1885 macd

macd ≈ gent without attribution

257 seemes] MacDonald (ed. 1885): “He pounces on the word seems.”

macd

257 coold mother] MacDonald (ed. 1885): “Not infrequently the type would appear to have been set up from dictation.”

1904 Bradley

Bradley

257-67 Bradley (1904, rpt. 2007, p. 86, n. 21) points out that if we to consider the speech as Hamlet describing himself, it would sound “almost boastful. It is not, in effect, about Hamlet at all; it is about his mother,” not perhaps consciously and not that she understands it to be about her.

1904 N&Q

Rushton

257-65 Rushton (1904, p. 464) cites Puttenham’s figure distributor, i.e., citing each separate element rather than summing up a whole, as applicable to various passages in Sh., including this where Hamlet inventories grief. “In this passage Hamlet uses not in expressing denial, and nor in introducing other parts of the negative. W. L. Rushton.”

1909 Rushton

Rushton = Rushton 1904

257-67 Seemes Maddam . . . suites of woe] Rushton (1909, pp. 4-6): “Hamlet also refers to the Distributor in another part of Hamlet [quotes 257-67]. In this passage, Hamlet uses not in expressing denial, and nor in introducing other parts of the negative. . . . </p.28><p.29> Hamlet, after having distributed the trappings and the suits of woe, inky cloak, fruitful river in the eye, &c., uses the pronoun ‘these.’” </p.29 >

1929 trav

trav ≈ Richardson without attribution

257 Seemes] Travers (ed. 1929): “Hamlet, pouncing on the objectionable word, but not troubling to give the too obvious, and to him unbearable, reason.”

1953 Joseph

Joseph

257 Seemes . . . seemes] Joseph (1953, pp. 59-60): <p. 59> “In the world which Hamlet gives us, to judge according to appearance would be to accept Claudius as a splendid monarch, and to accuse the Prince of affectation. The gestures, the normal ’shows’ of grief, he agrees, might ’indeed, seem’ [quotes 265-7]”, and Joseph refers to Hall’s sermon The Deceit of Appearance preached before James I in 1622 [Works 5.127-8] .</p. 59> <p. 60> But Hall admitted that “ ’Semblances are not always severed from truth’ [Works 5. 133].” </p. 60>

1964 HLQ

Doran

257 Seemes] Doran (1964, p. 266): Hamlet is thinking of his mother’s seeming after her husband’s death, as we learn in Hamlet’s soliloquy.

1976 Godshalk

Godshalk

257 seemes] Godshalk (1976, pp. 222, 231), <p. 222> referring to 257-67, suggests that “Hamlet sees himself as a complete rather than a fragmented man: he knows not ’seems.’ In the sartorial context with the emphasis on clothes, he is probably punning that he knows not ’seams,’ and the very pun asserts the coherence and the integrity of the inner and the outer man. . . . </p. 222> <p. 231>Hamlet’s tragedy is that of a man . . . who does not understand the artifice of his society. With words and actions, he is unable to penetrate the tragic mask of seeming. After the concatenation of failure which makes up a major part of the action, Hamlet finds truth inextricably linked with death.” </p. 231>

1994 HLQ

Doran

257 Seemes] Doran (1964, p. 266): Hamlet is thinking of his mother’s seeming after her husband’s death, as we learn in his soliloquy.

1997 Willbern

Willbern

257-67 Willbern (1997, p. 2) argues that performance cannot reveal all that is in the text; only reading can. See n. 265.

Wilbern

257 Seemes] Willbern (1997, pp. 2-3): <p. 2> Hamlet “rudely excises one term, ‘seems,’ from [Gertrude’s] discursive flow, and then subjects it to skeptical analysis . . . . </p. 2> <p.3> This tactic, in which a character treats a word [seems, the opposite of that within] like a symptom and turns it towards an unspecified discontent, looks very like a gesture towards the Freudian unconscious (or the Lacanian), an internal psychic process that is inarticulate, unspoken and not articulated, that is, not organized according to conscious modes of conventional representation or show.” </p. 3>

1997 Deprats

Deprats: Gide; Bonnefoy

257 seemes] Deprats (1997, pp. 125; 129): <p. 125> “My intention is to map the world of untranslatability for a French translator of Shakespeare, suggesting eventually that close attention to the theatrical dimension of a play, to its rhetorical and imaginary economy, without necessarily reducing the losses in poetic gloss, enables the translator to stick closely to the original language in all its physical reality, its palpable materiality.” </p. 125>

<p. 129> Thus he prefers Gide’s version [of 257] to Bonnefoy’s: Gide: “’Appearance? Eh! non, Madame. Realite. Qu,ai- je affaire avec le "paraitre?" ’ is obviously more ’oral,’ and conveys greater energy then does Yves Bonnefoy’s translation: ’Qui me semble, madame? Oh non, qui est! Je ne sais pas ce que sembler signifie!’ ” </p. 129>

1999 Mallin

Mallin

257 seemes] Mallin (1999, p. 134): “The play’s investment in the theory and practice of playmaking and performing extends from the intense, faulty self-consciousness of the hero [quotes 257] to the traveling players and the constant observational paranoia at Elsinore says, near the end-game, that his wit functions theatrically [quotes 3531-2] or when, expiring, he fits his death to the stage [quotes 3818-19], we know that the work may be the most theatrically overdetermined in history, exercising the ambiguity of the word ’act’ to the breaking point, such that every speech becomes a performance, every gesture a mask, all play a Play.”

2007 ShSt

Stegner

257 Stegner (2007, p. 114): “Hamlet’s fulfillment of his dual role as father confessor and avenger depends on the occlusion of his own interiority until he can successfully extract the conscience of others. When discussing his mournful appearance and behavior with Gertrude, he states [quotes 257-67]. Hamlet’s distinction between outward seeming (’trappings and suits of woe’) and inward being (’within which passes show’) signals the limitations of external appearances to convey interior thoughts and thereby injects suspicion into the direct correspondence between the visible signs and interior disposition.”