Notes for lines 0-1017 ed. Bernice W. Kliman
| 313 Ham. O that this too too {sallied} <solid> flesh would melt, {but Hamlet} | 1.2.129 |
|---|
1578 Cooper
Cooper
313 sallied] solidus in Cooper (1578): Ovid and others used the word in various senses, meaning whole (a solid year), hard, perfect, sound (not hollow), full, etc.
1723- mtby2
mtby2
313 sallied] Thirlby (1723-) “Q sallied It is in many places very faulty as well as here.”
1730 Bailey
Bailey
313 sallied] Bailey (1730), for sully: “to defile, to dirty, to dawb, to foul.”
1739 Smith
Smith
313-43 Smith (1739, pp. 157-8), <p. 157> referring to Longinus’s definition of
hyperbaton, comments: Longinus’s “fine remark [see below] may be illustrated by a celebrated Passage in
Shakespeare’s
Hamlet, where the Poet’s Art has hit off the strongest and most exact Resemblance of nature. The Behaviour of his Mother, makes such Impression on the young Prince, that his Mind is big with Ab- </p. 157><p. 158> horrence of it, but Expressions fail him. He begins abruptly, but as Reflexions croud thick upon his Mind he runs off into Commendations of his Father. Some time after his Thoughts turn again on the Action of his Mother which had raised his Resentments, but he only touches it, and flies off again. In short he takes up eighteen Lines in telling us that his Mother married again, in less than two Months after her Husband’s Death. [quotes 322-40, ending with “Oh most wicked speed!].” </p. 158>
1752 Dodd
Dodd = Smith
313-43 Dodd (1752, 1: 217): “The late translator of Longinus [see Smith, 1739] observes, upon that section (the 22d) where his excellent author is speaking of the Hyperbaton, ‘That nothing can better illustrate his remarks than a celebrated passage in Shakespear’s Hamlet, where the poet’s art has hit off the strongest and most exact resemblance of nature. The behaviour of his mother makes such impression on the young prince, that his mind is big with abhorrence of it, but expressions fail him: he begins abruptly, but as reflections crowd thick upon his mind, he runs off into commendations of his father. Some time after, his thoughts turn again on that action of his mother, which had rais’d his resentments, but he only touches it, and flies off again; in short, he takes up eighteen lines in telling us, that his mother married again in less than two months after her husband’s death.’”
1770 Gentleman
Gentleman
313-43 Gentleman (1770, 1: 16): “The first soliloquy of Hamlet is particularly striking and essential, as it is lays open in a pathetic, beautiful manner, the cause of his melancholy, and paints his mother’s frailty with strong feeling, yet preserves a delicate respect.”
Gentleman
313-43 Gentleman (1770, 2: 483) says of Garrick, “in his soliloquies he happily avoids that absurd method of speaking solitary meditation to the audience; he really appears alone.”
1773 gent
gent ≈ Gentleman (minus)
313-43 Gentleman (ed. 1773): “This soliloquy is admirably adapted to the situation of Hamlet’s mind; which is oppressed with grief, not only for the loss of a father, but by the sudden and strange second mariage of his mother.”
313-43 Richardson (1774, rpt. 1812, pp. 79-85): <p.79 > “ . . . . Exquisitely sensible of moral beauty and deformity, he discerns turpitude in a parent. Surprize, on a discovery so painful and unexpected, adds bitterness to his sorrow; and led, by the same moral principle, to admire and glory in the high desert [sic] of his father, even </p. 79> <p. 80> this admiration contributes to his uneasiness. Aversion to his uncle, arising from the same origin, has a similar tendency, and augments his anguish. All these feelings and emotions uniting together, are rendered still more violent, being exasperated by his recent interview with the Queen. . . .” </p. 80>
Richardson points out that the first lines of the soliloquy are general, that 321-6 become particular and that <p. 82> “The emotion grows still more vehement, and overflows the mind with a tide of corresponding images” in 326-9. “Observe too, that Hamlet’s indignation is augmented gradually, by admiration of his father, ‘So excellent a king;’ by abhorrence of Claudius, ‘That was, to this, Hyperion to a Satyr;’ and finally by a stinging reflection on the Queen’s inconstancy: ‘Why, should would hand on him, As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on: and yet, within a month—’ This affects him so severely, that he strives to obliterate the idea. ‘Let me not think on’t—’ By this effort he loses sight, for a moment, </p. 82> <p. 83> of the particular circumstances that gave him pain.” The next half line is more general but “Hamlet’s laboured composure is imperfect; . . . and he relapses into deeper anguish. Though he turned aside from a painful idea, . . . the impression remained, and restored the idea in its fullest vigour” and he quotes 331-4 </p. 83> <p. 84> 335-7.
“It is also observable, that, in consequence of the increasing violence of the emotion, the time so dexterously diminished from two months, to a little month, is rendered as it were visible by allusions and circumstances so striking, as to have in themselves a powerful tendency to stmulate and augment his anguish. ‘Or ere those shoes were old, With which she follow’d my poor father’s body, &c.’
“And again: ‘Within a month . . . She married!’ The crisis of his agitation, heightened to its extremity, is strongly marked in the following exclamation: ‘Oh, most wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!’ </p. 84>
<p. 85>“The observation following immediately after, is that of a mind reflecting, with some composure on effects and consequences. ‘It is not, nor it cannot come to good.’
“Hamlet, in his retirement, expresses his agony without reserve, and by giving it utterance he receives relief.”
</p. 85>
1780 Mackenzie
Mackenzie: standard
313 Mackenzie (1780, 3:233-4): <p.233>“
Hamlet, from the very opening of the piece, is delineated as one under the dominion of melancholy, whose spirits were overborn by his feelings. Grief for his father’s death, and displeasure at his mother’s marriage, prey on his mind, and he seems, with the weakness natural to such a disposition, to yield to their </p.233><p.234> controul. He does not attempt to resist or combat these impressions, but is willing to fly from the contest, though it were into the grave: ‘Oh! that this too too solid flesh would melt,’ &c.” </p. 234>
This will probably go into the Hamlet doc. as well, with what precedes the particular TLN ref.
1789 Anon.
Anon. re Kemble
313-43 Anon. [re
Kemble] (1789, pp. 6-7): <p. 6> “In the following soliloquy, which begins, ‘Oh that this too, too solid flesh would melt,’ &c., the actor seems to have a just sense of his mother’s </p. 6><p. 7> unnatural behaviour, and a perfect idea of the author’s meaning; and his utterance of the exclamation to the Deity, ‘O God! O God!’ is pathetic to a degree. The abhorrence of her incestuous marriage with his uncle, together with the recollection of her former affection for his father, is also well expressed.” </p. 7>
1808 Coleridge
Coleridge: xref 1616-18
313-43 Coleridge (1808, apud Williamson, p. 32): “His soliloquy: ’Oh! that this too, too solid flesh would melt,’ etc., springs from that craving after the indefinite,—for that which is not,—which most easily besets men of genius; and the self-delusion, common to this temper of mind is finely exemplified in the character which Hamlet gives of Himself: [quotes 1616-18, ’It cannot be . . . . bitter.’ . . . ].”
1819 cald1
cald1:
313 melt] Caldecott (ed. 1819): “ ‘To thaw or resolve that, which is frozen, regelo.’ Baret’s A1v. It has nearly the sense of dissolve; that which resolver and resolution, or analysis in science, yet retain. Our author has the same sentiment in [2H4 3.1.48 (1469-70)] ‘And the Continent Weary of solid firmness, melt itself Into the sea.’ III. 1. K. Hen.”
Ed. note: See 314. The 2H4 ref is telling because the combination of solid and melting is also in the 4to, 1600, E4v4-5.
1819 mclr2
mclr2
313-43 Coleridge (ms. notes, 1819, in Ayscough, ed. 1807): “See & transcribe from MSS * . & in Mrs Milne’s vol.”
1819 Coleridge
Coleridge = mclr2 [except I could not read the word “Vol.”]
313-43 O . . . tongue] Coleridge (1819, rpt. 1987, 5.2:298): “—See & transcribe from MSS *. & in Mrs. Milne’s Vol.”
1822 Nares
Nares
313 too too] “
Nares (
apud Furness, ed. 1877) points out the intensive effect of reduplication, giving instances from Holinshed and Spenser, and adding that it is common.”
J. D. Wilson (TLS 1935, p. 9) makes this point to justify his emendation sullied, but of course it also justifies the verb ’sallied,’ which he rejects in his many discussions of this line. See Blake 2002, below.
1832 cald2
cald2 = cald1 +
313 melt]
Caldecott (ed. 1832): “This use of the word was very common. Mr. Todd instances Bale’s
Br. Chron. of Lord Cobham. ‘He commended his soul into the hands of God; and so departed hence most cristenlye; his body resolved into ashes:’ and ‘
Resolv’d to their cold principle the dust.’
Shirley’s Poems, 8vo. 1646. p. 57.”
-1836 Coleridge
Coleridge
313- 43 Coleridge (-1836, 2:206-7): “His soliloquy—‘O! that this too too solid flesh would melt, &c.’ springs from that craving after the indefinite—for that which is not—which most easily besets men of genius, and the self-delusion common to this temper of mind is finely exemplified in the character which Hamlet gives of himself [quotes 1616-18].
1844 Halliwell
Halliwell: F2, Ray, Wiv. &c.
313 too too]
Halliwell (1844, 1: 39-43): <p. 39>“The well-known passage in Hamlet commencing with the line, ‘O! that this too, too1 solid flesh would melt,’ which I give as printed by Mr. Collier, and the best of modern editors, does not appear at first sight to merit any alteration, or invite any fancied improvement even from the most hypercritical or conjectural commentator; and I am afraid I shall be accused of sad want of taste in suggesting any innovation, more especially as I can hardly bring myself to believe that the change would be poetically beneficial. I have, indeed, been convinced almost against my will, and certainly in opposition to whatever ear I may have for Shakespearian poetry, that we must henceforth read, ‘Oh, that this
too-too solid flesh would melt,’ regarding
too-too essentially as one word; and I propose to place before the reader reasons sufficiently cogent to warrant this conclusion. I would, however, promise that I see no absolute necessity for altering the pronunciation, save the entire dropping of the comma in the middle of the line.
“The comma, indeed, is entirely a modern introduction; and in a copy of the second folio belonging to me the hyphen is found exactly as I have given it above. So, also, let any one look at the passage in [
Wiv. 2,2,? (0000)], ‘I could drive her then from the ward of her purity, her reputation, her marriage-vow, and a thousand other defences, which now </p.39><p. 40> are
too-too strongly embattled against me,’ in any of the early editions, and he will find the word ‘
too-too’ printed with a hyphen. Compare also [
2H6, a.s.l. (0000)], in the second folio, p. 126,— ‘I prethee peace, good Queene, And whet not on these too-too furious Peeres, For blessed are the Peace-makers on Earth.’ which I translate
verbatim, to show that the connected word is recognized in the early editions of Shakespeare.
“But why adopt the early method of printing the word? why not separate it? and what is the meaning of too-too? The answer to the last question will negative the others. Too-too is a provincial word recognized by Ray, and explained to be used ‘absolutely for very well or good,’ and Watson, a few years afterwards, says it is ‘often used to denote exceeding.’ See Notes to the First Sketches of Henry VI, p. 196. The term ‘exceeding} exactly explains too-too in the numerous instances I have collected, and how well does it apply to the passages above quoted. As a recognized archaism, I do not think we can safely mutilate the word in a manner wich certainly alters the meaning of the term as originally implied.
“I have not met with the word earlier than the time of Skelton,1 who uses it in his Interlude of ‘Magnyfycence,’ printed by Rastell, and without date,—‘He doth abuse Hymselfe
to-to.’ which is evidently the same word that is used my Shakespeare. But with Elizabethan authors the word was frequently used, </p. 40> <p. 41> and I beg to offer the following examples as proofs of my opinion
that too-too,
as used by our early writers, is one word, denoting ‘exceedingly,’
and that it ought to be so printed:— ‘I mought thereby helpe those that are diseased with any of these diseases, either of dice-playing, dauncing, or vain playes, or enterludes, which raigneth
too-too much.’
Northbrooke’s Treatise, 1577. ‘Anything but vertue it can tollerate to thrive, and that it is
too-to afrayd of.’—
Nashe’s Christs Teares over Jerusalem, 1594, fol. 15, ‘The horrible vice of whoredome is
too-too much frequented, to the great dishonour of God.’
Stub’s Anatomie of Abuses, 1595, p. 59. ‘If he acknowledge not, he is
too-too unkinde bothe to God and to her majestie, and to his owne countrie.’ —
Lambarde’s Perambulation, 1596, p. 348. ‘Tully, eloquent in his gloses, yet vaine glorious; Saloman, wise, yet
too-too wanton.’—
Lyly’s Euphues. ‘The word of God doth shew plainely that there be witches, and commaundeth they should be put to death. Experience hath taught
too-too many what harmes they do.’
Gifford’s Dialogue on Witches, 1603. </p. 41> ‘For Lewis his right, alasse, is
too-too lame, A senselesse claime, if truth be titles friend.’
The Troublesome Raigne of King John, 1611. ‘And may they so persever, and So perish, Robin prayes; But
too-too people are, Too many cloy my wayes.’
Warner’s Albion’s England, 1612. ‘Had Lesbia,
too-too kind, but known This sparrow, she had scorn’d her own.’
Herrick’s Works, i. 143. ‘And superstitious disordred orders,
Too-too luxuriant in the British borders.’
Billingsley’s Brachy-Martyrologia, 1657, p. 162. ‘Down the stairs he hurried quickly, While I made me
too-too sickly.’
Barnaby’s Journal. ‘And wou’d have gull’d him with a trick, But Martin was
too-too politic.’
Hudibras, II., iii. 158.
“An attentive perusal of these examples will readily convince the reader that a mere duplication of the
too, more especially with a comma dividing the word, will neither suit the context, nor the explanations of Ray and Watson. It is scarceky necessary to multiply more instances, but in the event of any one wishing to pursue the subject further, I will add the following references: —Promos and Cassandra, 1st part, act iii., sc. 6, and act v, sc. 5; Rudolph’s Jealous Lovers, 1646, p. 19, and 21; Wither’s Abuses, p. 43; The Troublesome </p. 42><p. 43> Raigne of King John, 1611, (two more instances); Herrick’s Works, ii., 27; Randolph’s Poems, 1643, p. 12; Randolph’s Amyntas, 1640, p. 82; Marlowe’s Dido, act v, sc. 1, and act v, sc. 2; Marlowe’s Hero and Leander, p. 334; The Return from Parnassus, act v., sc. 1; Wily Beguiled, ap. Hawkins, p, 340; Locrine, act i, sc. 2, and act v., sc. 5; British Bibliographer, ii., 320; Harrison’s Description of Britaine, pp. 108, 129, 193, 202, 220; British Bibliographer, iv., 205; The Misfortunes of Arthur, act iii., sc/1. and act v., sc. 1; The Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon, act ii., sc. 1 and 2, and act iii., sc. 1; A Woman is a Weathercock, act ii., sc. 1; Amends of Ladies, act ii., sc. 2; Ashmole’s Theat. Chem. Brit., p. 335; Beaumont and Fletcher, iii. 171; Young’s Night Thoughts, ed. 1827, p. 303.
“Many more references might no doubt be added, but what are here brought together will be quite sufficient to enable the reader to understand fully the force of the word too-too as used by our early writers. J. o. Halliwell.
“P.S. Since writing the above, I have observed an earlier instance of too-too in an unpublished romance in the Thornton MS., in the library of Lincoln Cathedral. This MS. was written in Yorkshire in the reign of Henry VI., and the passage which contains too-too is as follows: — ‘[yoch]erne he prayes hyme to-too, His nyne sonnes with hym to goo.’” </p. 43>
<n.1 > <p. 39> “The quarto editions, including the later one of 1637, read ‘sallied.’” </p. 39> </n1>
<n.1> <p. 40 > “The recent editor of Skelton, Mr. Dyce, has misunderstood the word, although he quotes a provincial proverb including it. See i.249.
“This may be the proper place to notice that Mr. Dyce has not mentioned the MS, of ‘Why Come ye Nat to Courte,’ in the Bodleian Library, </p. 40> <p. 41> which has many important variations; and although he has informed us (Pref., p. li,) that macaronic poetry did not commence with Skelton, by quoting, as from a MS., a work which has been printed by the Shakespeare Society, he does not any where allude to the fact that Gower had written a few lines of what is called Skeltonical metre. See the Confessio Amantis, MS. Bib. Antiq. Soc. 134, fol. 119b, and Ashmole’s Theatrum Chemicum Brittannicum, pp. 369-370.” </p. 41> </n.1>
1845 Baverstock
Baverstock: Halliwell +
313 too too]
Baverstock (1845, pp. 152-5): <p. 152> “In Article X, in the first volume of the Shakespeare Society’s Papers, Mr. Halliwell has suggested a new reading of the line in Hamlet— ‘Oh! that this too-too solid flesh would melt.’ I am inclined to think, and I believe I may say that other lovers of our poet will coincide in my opinion, that, supposing Mr. Halliwell’s reading to be what Shakespeare intended, but which I cannot at all believe, it will be a long, very long time before it becomes the generally received opinion of the mass of the lovers of Shakespeare.
“I am induced to offer these remarks upon the ground, that every fresh idea relating to Shakespeare requires to be amply discussed before it is expected to be the adopted opinion; and with the view that these few lines many not be without some service to our Society, I state my objections to the new reading.
“Upon reading the line—‘Oh! that this too-too solid flesh would melt.’— I cannot help feeling that Shakespeare intended to write
too, too, as printed by the modern editors of his works; and my reason is that too-too, of which the generally conceived meaning is
exceedingly, does not sufficiently express the intensity of Hamlet’s feelings upon the marriage of his mother and his uncle: it is the repetition of the word too, that conveys to the heart the strongly excited feelings under which Hamlet is suffering at the union which had taken place so soon after his father’s death. Of course, the pronunciation remains the same, but in my opinion the beauty of the line
completely depends upon the reiteration of the same word. He must be a very </p.152 ><p. 153> indifferent observer of nature who can read this line and not feel how extremely sensitive Hamlet was: it is not merely that he means to express ‘the melting of this solid flesh’ as a thing not to be dreamt of in philosophy, but it is the heart-rending anguish, the strongly excited emotion, that causes the expression—‘This too—too solid flesh would melt.’ Then, after having read the line thus, suppose we read it according to the new style— ‘Oh! that this too-too solid flesh would melt’—making tootoo as one word: how very meagre, how very insignificant the expression seems! it conveys to the mind no feeling of intense passion; it passes without leaving any idea of the extreme difficulty that Hamlet had to reconcile himself to this most unnatural union; and therefore it does not impress upon the mind the beauty of the language.
“Whatever Shakespeare intended—and I do not at all consider that the authorities quoted are a convincing proof of what the reading should be—there can be very little, if any doubt which reading expresses most decidedly to the mind the full meaning of what Hamlet intended. He is dissatisfied at what has taken place, and in the strongest language expresses himself to that effect.
“The introduction of the commas has very little to do with the meaning of the expression, for in fact I do not approve of it; the comma does not allow Hamlet sufficient time to feel what he says; nothing less than a pause gives the full meaning of the expression, and causes the necessity of the repetition. To read it with due feeling it should be— ‘Oh! that this too—too solid flesh would melt.’ Hamlet wishes to express how very insufficient his flesh is to bear up against this act; not on account of its being
very solid, but it is
too much too solid to admit of the least pos- </p. 153><p. 154> sibility of its melting: he knows all this, and therefore this repetition conveys more fully than any single word can do the extreme anguish of his mind.
“I cannot see how any reader of Shakespeare can for one moment suppose, that this beautiful reading of the most perfect composition that has emanated from our delightful poet will be given up for one which, it is evident, is directly opposed to the feelings and intentions of Hamlet’s mind. I will assume that even if this new reading be the correct one, no person, I dare venture to say, will make use of it to the detriment of one of the most beautiful lines of the play: how strongly the original reading conveys to the mind what Hamlet felt, and how very weak would the line appear according to the fresh reading!
“It will be as well, before I close this article, to consider how far the authorities quoted by Mr. Halliwell afford any proof of this innovation, as it has been very justly termed, being a correct one, and which will be acceptable to the general readers. In all of these quotations there does not seem to be any close resemblance to the meaning of the word as made use of by Hamlet: it is impossible, from the few words quoted of each, to ascertain the direct meaning, but it appears to me that there is a very great difference between ‘too—too,’ as used by Hamlet, and ‘too-too,’ as used by the authors whose works are quoted in Mr. Halliwell’s observations: it is not only the similarity of the word in form, and that does not always agree, but it is whether the meaning corresponds. The word, as used by Hamlet, is not the mere expression of
very solid flesh, but he wants to express how much
too solid is his flesh to admit of any chance of its melting agreeably to his wishes, and which the words
very, or
exceedingly, would not at all convey: now, there is no proof of such expression being necessary in any of the works quoted, but it might have been used by one or two, although not in the same sense as </p. 154><p. 155> Shakspeare [sic]; for instance, the lines in Herrick’s Works, i., 143— ‘Had Lesbia, too—too kind, but known This Sparrow, she had scorn’d her own.’
Too—too here will either bear the interpretation of
very, or too—too kind; and again, the lines in Hudibras are still more capable of this reading—‘And wou’d have gull’d him with a trick, But Martin was too, too politic.’ In this line,
too-much too politic will be as good as
Martin was exceedingly politic; and it may be that Butler used the second
too to make out the measure, the single
too being a more desirable reading than either.
“I have mentioned these instances to show that it does not follow, as a matter of course, that one author intends to convey the same meaning as another by this word; and I certainly do not think that sufficient reason has been given to compel us to alter the sense of Shakespeare’s line, which it certainly appears to me we should do by this new reading: at all events, the force of the expression will be altered by it.
“As a lover of Shakespeare, and a well wisher to the Society, I have been induced to write these few lines, which I hope may act as ‘confirmation strong As proof of holy write—’ of the meaning of ‘too—too’ as used by Hamlet. J. Hinton Baverstock. August 24, 1845.” </p. 155>
1845 Hunter
Hunter
313 too too]
Hunter (1845, 2: 217-18): <p. 217>“It is generally supposed that the reduplication of
too is emphatic; but this may be doubted.
Too too, or, as we some times find it printed
too-too, appears to have been in sense neither more nor less than
too. As this is a point which has </p. 217><p. 218> not only escaped the commentators, but I believe the whole body of writers on English philology (1832), I shall illustrate it by a pretty large collection of instances, taken from prose writers.
‘‘They will say that no wise man would ever think that for shame which their adversary uttereth without all shame; yea they will say he speaketh too too babyishly, and so dash him out of countenance.’—Wilson’s Logick
‘A glorious gentleman that had two servants, and belike would be known not only to have them, but also to have more, said in the presence of a worshipful man, I marvaille much where all my servants are. Marry, Sir, quoth one, that thought to hit him home, they were here all two even now. Thus he closely mock’t him, and worthily; for the number is not great that standeth upon two, and all is to to much when it speaks of so few.’—Wilson’s Rhetorique
‘Whereupon it cometh to pass that the bastards of great noblemen of pride and too too great presumption do avouch themselves to be descended of the same house.’—Perne’s Blazon of Gentry, p. 283.
‘Withdrawing himself from the miseries, vanities, and vexations of this foolish and now too too much doting world, may give himself to the sweet contemplation of God.—Googe’s Book of Husbandry, Dedication.
‘All which could not have been done but by men united into a society of company, as would be too too evident if once all were set at liberty.’—A Treatise of Commerce, by John Wheeler, p. 157.
‘Contrariwise, Seneca was forbidden by Serenus the physician to eat any more of fish, being of too too waterish a nourishment for his weak body.’—Moffett on Food, p. 57.
“Palsgrave has beside to-much, to-little, &c., to to much, to to little, to to great, to to small, answering to par trop trop peu; par trop trop grant; par trop trop petit.
“The pronunciation was too-toó, as appears by this line of a sonnet of Constable’s—‘But I did too-too inestimable wey her.’” </p. 218>
1856 hud1
hud1 = Coleridge
313-43 Coleridge (apud Hudson, ed. 1856): “‘This tedium vitæ is a common oppression on minds cast in the Hamlet mould, and is caused by disproportionate mental exertion, which necessitates exhaustion of bodily feeling. Where there is a just coincidence of external and internal action, pleasure is always the result; but where the former is deficient, and the mind’s appetency of the ideal is unchecked, realities will seem cold and unmoving. In such cases, passion combines itself with the indefinite alone. In this mood of his mind, the relation of the appearance of his father’s spirit in arms is made all at once to Hamlet:—it is—Hamlet’s speech, in particular—a perfect model of the true style of dramatic narrative; the purest poetry, and yet in the most natural language, equally remote from the ink-horn and the plough.’—Coleridge. H.”
1859 stau
stau: Halliwell; ≈ Baverstock (minus the dash between the two too’s) without attribution
313 too too] Staunton (ed. 1860): “Mr. Halliwell has proved by numberless examples, culled from our early writers, that where too too occurred, in the generality of cases it formed a compound word, too-too, and when thus connected bore the meaning of exceeding. The present instance, however, must be regarded as an exception to the rule. Here the repetition of too is not only strikingly beautiful, rhetorically, but it admirably expresses that morbid condition of the mind which maks the unhappy prince deem all the uses of the world but ‘weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable’.”
1859 Werder
Werder
313-43 Werder (1859, trans. 1907, pp. 72-8)<p. 72> believes, contrary to Garve and </p. 72> <pp. 73-6> other critics, that Hamlet has ample motivation for his wretched desolation of mind. Werder claims that Hamlet’s aggrieved feelings are justified; </p. 76><p. 77> within he rages; </p. 77><p. 78> he is oppressed by terrible forebodings. </p. 78>
1861 wh1
wh1= stau without attribution but with attribution to stau’s source (Halliwell,) and to Hunter for the idea that wh1, like stau, rejects. + in magenta underlined
313 too too] White (ed. 1861): “That ‘too, too’ was used absolutely for very well, or good, Ray remarked in his English Words not Generally Used, (London, 1674;) and Mr. Hunter and Mr. Halliwell have recently brought forward many instances of its unmistakable use as a compound epithet. I refrain from adding to the instances which they cite the score of others at my hand. But that this phrase was also used with intensifying iteration, I think is clear from instances like that which is the occasion of this Note, and from the similar iteration of other adverbs and adjectives in the literature of Shakespeare’s day. For instance,—‘Alas what fals are falne into unto thy mind? That there where thou confest thy mischief lyes, Thy wit doet use still still more harmes to finde.’ Sidney’s Arcadia, Lib. II. p. 225. ed. 1603. ‘While he did live far, far was all disorder.’ Ibid. Lib. V. p. 430. ‘Fy schoole of Patience, Fy, your lesson is Far far too long to learne it without booke.’ Astrophel and Stella, St. 56, Ibid. p. 537.Then since (deare life) you faine would have me peace And I mad with delight, want wit to cease, Stop you my mouth with still still kissing me.’ Idem, St. 81, Ibid. p. 547. ‘Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best, Even to the pure and most most loving breast.’ Shakespeare’s Sonnet CX. ‘She wept aye too and too, and said, alas! The time and houre that ever I borne was.’ Browne’s Shepheard’s Pipe, Works, Vol. III. p. 21. ‘Yet in this Propagation greatm great Corsses understand,’ Albion’s England, Chap. 105, p. 412, Ed. 1606. In any case the compound epithet must have originated in the frequent iterative use of the word.”
He adds Ray, another source, and more examples, plus the sentence at the end.
1864 Fechter
anon
313-43 Anonymous (Sun in Fechter, 1864, p. 6): “The first soliloquy of importance, ‘Oh! that this too solid flesh would melt,’ was delivered with infinite care—not in that stagy style that for years has been accepted as the true version—not in that mouthing and pedantic manner that of late has passed current for great acting—but in a calm, reflective, and natural mood.”
1870 rug1
rug1
313 sallied flesh] Moberly (ed. 1870): “The base affinities of our bodily nature are ever present to Hamlet’s mind. Here he thinks of the body as hiding from us the freshness, life, and nobleness of God’s creation. If it were to pass away, silently and spontaneously, like the mist on a mountain side, or if, curtain-like, we might tear it down by an act of violence, it may be that we should see quite another prospect: at any rate, the vile things now before us would be gone for ever.”
rug1 = rug2
1872 cln1
cln1: Hunter, //TGV
313 too too] Clark & Wright (ed. 1872): “Compare [TGV 2. 4. ? (0000)]: ‘O, but I love his lady too too much.’ Hunter (Illustrations of Shakespeare, [2: 217-8] gives several examples of this emphatic repetition of ‘too.’”
1872 hud2
hud2 ≈ clr without attribution + in magenta underlined
313-43 Hudson (ed. 1872): “Observe how, in this speech, Hamlet’s brooding melancholy leads him to take a morbid pleasure in making things worse than they are.”
Ed. note: Hudson may be the 1st to express the idea (later T. S. Eliot’s) that Hamlet’s emotions are in excess of the facts.
1873 rug2
rug2 = rug1
313 sallied flesh]
1875 Marshall
Marshall
313-43 Marshall (1875, p. 18): “ . . . it is not until he is alone that his pent up feelings, the passionate indignation which he has been forced to conceal, burst forth in this magnificent soliloquy.”
1877 v1877
v1877: Nares, Halliwell (Sh. Soc. Papers, 1844), Hunter, wh1, stau, rug
313
v1877 = hal
313
too too]
Furness (ed. 1877) comments that “after all [Halliwell] did not so print it [i.e., as a hyphenated word] in his edition.”
I have to wait until Hardin gets Coleridge to me to set a date to it. See above Hudson
v1877 = rug
313 sallied flesh]
1879 Halliwell
Halliwell
313 sallied]
Halliwell-Phillips (1879, pp. 24-5): <p. 24> “The repetition in the two texts [Q1 and Q2], of a marked and unique verbal error is one of the best evidences we can have, short of absolute and independent testimony, of the fact that both of the texts were, in the portion in which the error occurs, derived from one and the same source. There is such an evidence, hitherto unnoticed as an evidence, in the recurrence of the word
sallied in the early quarto editions of Hamlet. It is a strange perversion of the term
solid, and one which appears to prove decisively that the quarto texts of the well-known speech in which it occurs were all taken from one authority. Hence, as it seems clear, inasmuch no one could suppose that the edition </p. 24><p. 25> 1603 was used in the formation of that of 1604, we may fairly conclude that the text of the latter was in existence in the previous year, and that some portion of the former edition was taken from the manuscript of that text.” </p. 25>
Ed. note: Though Halliwell’s note concerns the relation of Q1 to Q2, it shows that he thought the word sallied an error.
1879 Clarke & Clarke
Clarke & Clarke: standard
313-20 Clarke & Clarke (1879, p. 424) note the repetitions “to express mournful emotion”
1880 Tanger
Tanger
312 Tanger (1880, p. 115): <p. 115> claims that
manet, found here and in 1588, 2142 only in F1, is another of F1’s non-authorial additions but offers no support for the assertion.
Tanger
313 sallied] Tanger (1880, p. 122) consider Q2 in error “probably owing to the negligence, inattention, or criticism of the compositor,” though he notes that Q1 has the same word.
1883 Gervinus
Gervinus
313 Gervinus (1883, p.570): “Before the call for vengeance has reached him, and after it has sounded, life weighs upon him like an insufferable burden, and this urges him in his reflections to the very limits of suicide.”
1885 macd
macd
313 MacDonald (ed. 1885): “A soliloquy is as the drawing called a section of a thing; it shows the inside of the man. Soliloquy is only rare, not unnatural, and in art serves to reveal more of nature. In the drama it is the lifting of a veil through which dialogue passes. The scene is for the moment shifted into the lonely spiritual world, and here we begin to know Hamlet. Such is his wretchedness, both in mind and circumstance, that he could well wish to vanish from the world. The suggestion of suicide, however, he dismisses at once—with a momentary regret, it is true—but he dismisses it—as against the will of God to whom he appeals in his misery. The cause of his misery is now made plain to us—his trouble that passes show, deprives life of interest, and renders the world a disgust to him. There is no lamentation over his father’s death, so dwelt upon by the king; for loving grief does not crush. Far less could his uncle’s sharp practice, in scheming for his own election during Hamlet’s absence, have wrought in a philosopher like him such an effect. The one makes him sorrowful, the other might well annoy him, but neither could render him unhappy: his misery lies at his mother’s door; it is her conduct that has put out the light of her son’s life. She who had been to him the type of all excellence, she whom her father had idolized, has within a month of his death married his uncle, and is living in habitual incest—for, as such, a marriage of the kind was then unanimously regarded. To Hamlet’s condition and behaviour, his mother, her past and her present, is the only and sufficing key. His very idea of unity had been rent in twain.”
1885 macd
macd
313 sallied] MacDonald (ed. 1885): “sullied: compare sallets, [932] [1486]. I have a strong suspicion that sallied and not solid is the true word. It comes nearer the depth of Hamlet’s mood.”
1888 macl
macl: standard but more emphatic than most
313-43 Maclachlan (ed. 1888) more than agrees with Hamlet that Gertrude’s remarriage is despicable; “unparalleled” as is Hamlet’s speech, it “is yet inferior to the occasion and the crime.” In a note for 1262, Maclachlan adds: “The deep and cruel irreverence to his father’s memory, and the shocking degradation of his mother, perpetuated with her own assistance, fill his world with horror,” leaving no room for ambition.
1899 ard1
ard1: Nares without attribution; // TGV = cln1 without attribution +
313 too too] Dowden (ed. 1899): “hyphenated by some editors.”
ard1 ≈ cald on // without attribution; Furnivall (Cotgrave); ≈ macd without attribution + Q1
313 sallied] Dowden (ed. 1899): “If we were to retain sallied, I should explain it as sullied, comparing it to [932] where F reads sullyes and Q sallies; and since Q1 has here ‘this to much griev’d and sallied flesh,’ we have some reason to think that sullied may be right.”
1902 Reed
Reed: claims Bacon is Shakespeare, supported by Promus notebooks begun Dec. 1594
313 Reed (1902, § 883) quotes Bacon History of Life and Death 1623: “Melting of the body is the work of the vital spirits alone, when they are excited by heat; for then, though under confinement, they necessarily expand and make the grosser part, the flesh, soft and fusible, as in the case of metals and wax.”
Reed: claims Bacon is Shakespeare, supported by Promus notebooks begun Dec. 1594
313 Reed (1902, § 574): quotes Bacon De Augmentis 1622: “A man might wish to die, though he were neither brave, nor miserable, nor wise, wholly from weariness of living.”
1904 ver
ver
313-43 Verity (ed. 1904): “ [. . . ]. It is a natural expedient of dramatists to show that a character is in the very mood in which he will be most influenced by some incident or information. After lines [321-43] we can estimate much more clearly the effect on Hamlet of Horatio’s story []. Before he has heard the story Hamlet does not suspect any foul play.”
I should possible put this elsewhere as well. Possibly in 728.
ver ≈ macd without attribution
313 sallied] Verity (ed. 1904): “Q2 has sallied; possibly = sullied, corrupt.”
1907 bull
bull: standard
313 sallied] Bullen (ed. 1907, 10: 432) rejects Q2 sallied meaning sullied.
1918 TLS
Wilson ≈ macd without attribution; ard1 without attribution
313 sallied] Wilson (“Hamlet’s Solid Flesh,” TLS 18[1918]: 233) explains and justifies the word sullied on textual and literary grounds.
I have a xerox copy in cam3 file. He repeats his argument virtually verbatim in MSH.
1918 TLS
Anon.
313 sallied] Anon. [C. L. D.] (“Hamlet’s Solid Flesh,” TLS 1918: 245) denies that Sh. would have used too = excessively, which always modifies an adjective or adverb, with sallied, a past participle. “Shakespeare could no more have written ’too sullied’ or ’too stained’ than he could have written ’very pleased.’ Henry Irving, indeed, used to pronounce ’solid’ as if it were ’sullied’ but this can hardly have been a prophetic anticipation of your correspondent’s theory.”
1918 TLS
Sargeaunt contra Wilson; Abbott
313 sallied] Sargeaunt (“Hamlet’s Solid Flesh,” TLS 1918: 337) maintains that there is a solution that avoids changing the text; sallied in the passive sense of sallied upon is equivalent to other passive constructions in the plays, where the preposition, as Abbott shows, can be missing.
1918 TLS
Wilson
313-43 Wilson (TLS 25 July 1918, p. 349), in “Hamlet’s Solid Flesh,” covers much the same ground as that in MSH, below. He counters Sargeaunt’s argument the previous week that sally could be an active verb. It is intransitive. He discusses the a:u errors. He has the same snow-flecks-thaw-melt images.
1918 TLS
Sargeaunt
313 Sargeaunt (1918, 417-8) disagrees with Wilson that sallied must be sullied. By “‘sallied’ flesh Hamlet means ‘sallied upon,’ i.e., assaulted.” Sargeaunt cites many other instances of passive verbs made active.
1924 vand
vand: Furnivall (The Academy, 22 July 1882, p. 60); Sargeaunt (TLS 18 July, pp. 317-18√, & Sept 5, 1918, pp. 417-18 √)
313 sallied]
Van Dam (1924, pp. 148-9) <p. 148> likes the arguments of Furnivall and Sergeaunt that
sallied, means “flesh ‘which has been broken out upon,’ or as ‘assaulted, assailed.”
On the other hand,
Van Dam points out that
to sally never seems to appear as a transitive verb. </p.148><p. 149> Deciding that
sallied is a misprint, and preferring the Q2 variant hidden within the misprint to the F1 variant, He thinks that Q1
grieu’d is a logical choice but rejects it since it cannot be deduced from the Q2 variant. The right word, then, is
sailed or
sailled, which according to the
NED is the past participle of
to assail in the form without the prefix
a. </p. 149>
1928 TLS
Mackail, J. W. contra Wilson and Greg
313 sallied] Mackail (1928, p. 710): Solid is the sense required, and the word with an a is among the spellings of solid in the N.E.D. Even Q1’s ’grieu’d and sallied’ can be read as meaning burdensome or ponderous and solid. So textual study supports what sense requires and what F1 has.
Wilson, responding in TLS p. 759, admits that Dr. Mackail has a point, that the transition from solid to sallied is possible, but Wilson holds out for sullied because it gives “a finer reading.” he repeats his snow imagery from 1918, etc.
1928 TLS
Potts, L. J. contra Wilson
313 sallied] Potts (1928, p. 783): Wilson is a champion or “devil’s advocate” for the scientific study of texts. Since he admits that sallied could be the spelling of solid, Potts turns to linguistic probability and finds too-too sullied lacking. It’s a participle, not an adjective. Wilson relies on the idea of Shn perfection. A metaphor does not yield a one-to-one correspondence but a chain of impressions. Wilson wants to substitute a conceit for a metaphor. Potts is pleading for a critical principle rather than for a specific reading: linguistic probability is important too.
Wilson responds (TLS 1928, p. 806), simply repeating his liking for his image. OED has instances in the 16th century of too-too modifying a verb.
Mark Hunter carries on the argument (TLS> 1928, p. 839): To compare himself with unsullied snow would be self-righteous: Hamlet would not do that. Secondly, he wishes his physical self, not his moral self, to melt away. “Suicide would be no remedy for ’sullied flesh,’ as Dr. Wilson interprets it.”
1928 TLS
Marschall, Wilhelm
313 sallied] Marschall (1928, p. 910) considers sallied, which he calls a dialect word, to be correct. He refers to his forthcoming essay in Anglia (“Welchen Dialekt spricht Hamlet?”), which defines sally as meaning to make a boat sway by alternating one’s weight from side to side (see Joseph Wright’s Dialect Dictionary). Hamlet means that life is throwing him from side to side. The image accords with “the thousand naturall shocks That flesh is heire to” [1716-17].
1929 trav
trav
313 that]
Travers (ed. 1929): “expressing a wish.”
trav ≈ Nares without attribution
313 too too]
1931 Waldock
313-43 Waldock (1931, p.13: “For all that Goethe, and numberless critics between
Richardson and Bradley, say of this soliloquy, it might not have been in their editions of the play. . . . Could any passage in the play be more significant than . . . this first confidential communication from Hamlet to ourselves? We naturally take it to be our key.”
1934 Wilson
Wilson MSH
313-43 Wilson (1934, pp. 198-200) <p. 198> finds the Q2 punctuation perfect, apart from a few insignificant additions and omissions of commas. </p. 198> <p. 199> He compares the speech in the Globe text, which is very heavily marked. “The whole thing is a piece of rhetorical declamation: Hamlet is tearing his passion to tatters, to the very rags. And the modern text is based upon that of F1, which may be quoted for the sake of comparison.[quotes F1]. </p. 199> Wilson calls this “playhouse pointing.” Q2, on the other hand, “is a piece of meditation, spoken trippingly on the tongue, with two striking pauses [330, 340]. And these pauses, these two semi-colons, give us the clue to the speaker’s mood. Hamlet is thinking, not declaiming. He speaks as in a dream. But the dream is a nightmare, the full significance of which we do not realise until the last three lines. His mind turns and turns upon itself in its effort to escape giving birth to the ‘monster in his thought too hideous to be shown,’ and at the exclamation ‘Let me not think on’t’ he seems for a moment to batten it down beneath the hatches of consciousness. But the writhings begin again and the stream of images continues as uninterruptedly as before until there comes the second pause—this time in the middle of a sentence—and the dreadful thought is born at last, like a brood of hissing snakes: ‘to post With such dexteritie to incestious sheets.’ After this the speaker has strength for nothing more than two tremulous lines; the soliloquy ends with a sob; and when Horatio arrives immediately after, his friend’s eyes are so full of tears that he does not at first recognize him. I cannot feel the slightest doubt that this speech is punctuated as Shakespeare intended.”
1934 Wilson
Wilson MSH = Wilson TLS 1918; NED; contra Dr J. W. Mackail;
313 sallied]
Wilson (1918, p. 233; 1934, pp. 307-15), <p. 307>
Wilson says
a and
u are constantly being confused in Sh. and mentions
Gertrad for
Gertrude among others. </p. 307><p. 308>
Sallied (assaulted) seems plausible to some, but it won’t work because the
OED does not provide any instance of the adjective used transitively, and the definition of
assaults does not fit
sallies (932). </p. 308><p. 309> The
NED offers examples of
too too modifying a verb. Mackail argues for
solid, and Wilson admits that a misprint of
sallied for
solid is graphically possible. Q1 has
grieu’d and sallied, proving that what the “Q1 reporter heard on stage and carried away in his memory was not ‘solid,’ but a past participle. His gloss ‘too much grieu’d’ proves that”; and Mackail’s attempt to explain
grieu’d as something other than a participle only weakens his position. </p. 309> <p. 310>.
If F1’s
solid were to be uttered by Burbage, said to be a hefty man, “Would not the whole house be convulsed with laughter, and the play completely ruined?” Greg agreed with Wilson that
solid cannot have been what Sh. wrote, on the same grounds—Burbage’s size. </p. 310><p. 311> Since Burbage acted till his death in 1619 and since the Folio was probably in preparation soon after, it seems obvious to Wilson that
solid was never in the promptbook. It was, says Wilson, just one of the many careless errors by Scribe C. Because in act one Q2 used Q1, the fact that both have
sallied is of no account and probably
sullied is what was heard on stage from the beginning. </p. 311> <p. 312> The Q1 scribe similarly mistook
u for
a in
scalyon [1628]. Wilson returns to Mackail’s argument that
sullied “‘is irrelevant to the context.’” Wilson reiterates his original canon: no F1 variant can be accepted if there is a viable Q2 alternative; he also justifies the word on literary grounds. Sh. used the word
sully eight times: he is thinking “of flecks or spots upon a surface of pure white.” Wilson quotes various instances of Sh’s use of the word:
1H4, WT </p. 312><p. 313>
1H6, Wiv., LLL, Ham., Son. 15.12,
Son. 69.11-14. What Sh. is thinking of is pure white snow, begrimed with dirt that Hamlet wishes would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew. It is an image of “purity defiled.”
The epithet is the most important word in the first soliloquy. </p. 313> <p. 314> What his mother has done, her incest, has corrupted his flesh (Hamlet thinks). The words “sullied flesh” are the key motif of the whole play; his whole malaise throughout is caused by his mother’s unseemly liaison with his “goatish uncle.” “Sullied flesh” is the clue to many other passages, including 1772-4, 1778-9 </p. 314> <p. 315> “Hamlet felt himself involved in his mother’s lust; he was conscious of sharing her nature in all its rankness and grossness; the stock from which he sprang was rotten. The ‘sullied’ of the quartos is dramatically as well as poetically relevant to its context.” </p. 315>
1934 rid1
rid1: Wilson without attribution; xref 939; // LLL 5.2.353
313 sallied Ridley (ed. 1934) believes that sullied, the correction of sallied fits Hamlet’s state of mind, which is more concerned with the flesh’s “sulliedness ” than with its solidity.
1934 HLQ
Craig
313-16 Craig (1934, pp. 24-5): <p. 24> “The passage is important in this study because it links
Hamlet to Cardan in a significant fashion. The first two of the four lines just quoted are closely paralleled in Plutarch (
Consolatio ad Apollonium, 15, [n. 1] whom Cardan is following. ande in
De consolatione in several places. ” Craig says that no Christian canon forbids suicide, But Cardan refers to “oure Lawes,” which Craig explains as Christina laws, “do not permit any ma
n to procure his own death: and for good reason: For that nothing shoulde be intollerable to a Christian man . . . .” </p.24> <p.25> Cardan observes about the woes of kingship lines that are relevant to the soliloquy:
’At length to bed, where before sleape he museth of many displeasant matters, howe many men are or must be executed, though not altogether iustly, yet necessarily, What practices are made, what feare, what enuy, what iniury, what warre, what spoyle, what subuersion of Citties, what suspicion of death, and last of all desyreth eyther not to be, or els to enioy a more quiet life .. . . And admitte he doth sleape, in sleapynge he meeteth vnquiet ymaginacyons, fearfull dreames & visyons’ (I 8v).” </p.25>
1935 Wilson
Wilson WHH ≈ MSH
313 sallied] Wilson (1935, pp. 39-42)
1935 TLS
Young, G. M., contra Wilson on sullied ; // 2H4 ≈ cald1 without attribution
313 too too] Young (1935, p. 33), in defense of solid that Wilson thinks too pedestrian for the context, responds with a reference to 2H4 3.1.45 ff., that kit picks up; OED
[Here from U of Victoria’s Internet Editions: Q1
King O God that one might reade the booke of fate,
And see the reuolution of the times
Make mountaines leuell, and the continent
(Wearie of solide firmenesse) melt it selfe
Into the Sea: . . . .
O if this were seene,
The happiest youth viewing his progresse through,
What perills past, what crosses to ensue?
Would shut the booke and sit him downe and die:
“Here we see the same movement of thought—weariness, solidity, melting, voluntary death — that Shakespeare follows again in Hamlet. Incidentally, the O.E.D. reference to sad and solid rain (1621) = steady downpour, shows that to an Elizabethan ear, solid might have an under-suggestion of monotonous and wearisome persistence, which is what Hamlet felt about the world and himself having to live in it. ”
Tenacious as ever, Wilson comes back (TLS 1935, p. 48) with no new argument but a reassertion of the absolute correctness of his emendation sullied.
1939 kit2
kit2: standard
313 too too] Kittredge (ed. 1939): "A very common reduplication of too. The accent seems to have been too’too, with no pause between the words."
kit2: contra macd, Wilson; on 2H4 ≈ cald1 (1819) without attribution and Young (1935) without attribution
313 sallied] Kittredge (ed. 1939): "solid. The Folio reading. The Second Quarto reads ’this too too sallied flesh’; the First, ’this too much grieu’d and sallied flesh.’ Sallied may well be a form of solid, due to confusion of pronunciation between [short a and short o]. Cf. such forms as farren for foreign [etc.]. George MacDonald’s interpretation of sallied as ’sullied’ is eloquently defended by Wilson. Sallied would be an easy misprint for sullied, and sallies for sullies occurs in [Q2 932], and unsallied for unsullied in [LLL 5.2.352 (2278)] (Folio). But the explanation of sullied as indicating that Hamlet regards his own flesh as defiled by his mother’s incest is far-fetched, and solid is obviously correct. Hamlet wishes that one who, like himself, is tired of life could melt away with a wish, or that suicide were not forbidden by God’s law: "Thou shalt not kill.’ What follows explains why he is life-weary. There is a curious coincidence of phraseology (weary, solid, and melt in [2H4 3.1.47-49 (1469-71)
And the continent
Weary of solid firmness, melt itself
Into the sea!
1946 Granville-Barker
Granville-Barker: reluctant assent to Dover Wilson’s sullied
313 sallied] Granville-Barker (1946, 1: 53 n. 7): Disagrees with Dover Wilson about the word’s “extended dramatic value,” but he does grant that the repetition of words involving liquefying “does turn ’solid’ flesh into too explicit an image; whereas it both clarifies and enriches ’sullied.’ On that ground (for one) the innovation may be counted dramatically preferable.”
1953 Parsons
Parsons: Marshall, ver, J. D. Wilson
313 sallied]
Parsons (1953, pp. 70-1) <p 70.> points out that—
pace Wilson—since the first nine lines refer not </p. 70><p. 71> to the queen but to a general malaise and a desire for annihilation,
solid is the best choice. “Only a solid can melt or thaw.” </p. 71>
1956
ShSur
Bowers contra Wilson
313 sallied] Bowers (1956, p. 44): Dover Wilson’s “argument in favour of sullied has . . . fallen short of acceptance. While Wilson is sure that sullied best fits the tone of the ’To be or not to be’ soliloquy, others are equally certain that this word ill fits the context and that solid was the adjective which Shakespeare had in his original manuscript.”
1957 pel1
pel1: standard
313 sallied] sullied Farnham (ed. 1957): “Use of this emendation of the ’sallied’ of the 1604-05 quarto instead of the widely accepted ’solid’ of the 1623 folio is strongly recommended by: (1) the implications of the interestingly corrupt ’too much grieu’d and sallied flesh’ of the 1603 quarto, into which the intrusive participle ’grieu’d’ cannot be thought to have come at the call of an original ’solid’ standing in the place of ’sallied’; (2) the example of the ’sallies’ in a later passage of the 1604-05 quarto (II, i, 39), which in its context is most certainly to be taken as ’sullies’ and which in the folio appears as ’sulleyes.’”
1957 pen1b
pen1b
313 too too sallied flesh] too too solid flesh Harrison (ed. 1957): “Both Quartos read ’sallied’ = ’sullied’, or ’smirched’, which may be correct; though there was nothing comic to Shakespeare’s audience in the phrase ’solid flesh’.”
1958 fol1
fol1: contra Dover Wilson; Webster
313 sallied] solidWright & LaMar (ed. 1958): “some modern bibliographers argue a case for ’sallied’ (a variant form of ’sullied’), which appears in the First and Second Quartos. They insist that this word emphasizes Hamlet’s feeling of personal defilement from his mother’s incestuous marriage. However, solid, of the First Folio, introduces a more forceful metaphor, and Hamlet’s disgust at his mother’s incest is made explicit elsewhere in his soliloquy. Margaret Webster comments in Shakespeare Without Tears that for stage purposes the reading solid is preferable because it is imbedded in tradition. Certain editors, Miss Webster observes, ’support with passion’ the reading sullied, but she adds, ’I cannot myself see quite why they are so greatly disturbed by solid.’ We have retained solid because there seems no valid reason to reject the Folio reading, which has been traditionally preferred.”
1960 Knights
Knights
313 sallied flesh] Knights (1960, p. 60) agrees with Hamlet that there is sufficient cause for his feelings of being polluted by his mother’s speedy marriage to a man who can be described with justice as a satyr. However, he has no right to destroy the consciousness of another as he does Ophelia’s in the nunnery scene and at the play.
1974 evns1
evns1
313-43 Kermode (ed. 1974, p. 1139) notes that soliloquies are a surviving remnant of the medieval drama’s “custom of using direct address for simple exposition, of treating the spectators as part of the show.”
1976 Beckerman
Beckerman
313-43 Beckerman (1976, pp. 40-2) <p. 41> discusses an “active-reactive duality” he finds in all plays as a “way of schematizing the </p. 41> <p. 42> energies in a play.” </p. 42> Beckerman <p. 40> calls Hamlet’s first soliloquy “reactive”: “The speech gives voice to [his] disenchantment, but even more than that, it is an effort to absorb the blow of the marriage and find some accommodation to it. Thus, the energy expended by Hamlet is not to bring about a change but to adjust to the change that has occurred. The first eight and a half lines serve as a prologue [to
merely, 321]. In longing for dissolution and in reaction to the world about </p. 40> <p. 41> him, Hamlet displays his state of mind. . . . As he dwells on recent events, remembrance becomes increasingly painful. ’Let me not think on’t!’ [330] is the active thrust by which he tries to stem the involuntary flood of recollection. As the past reaches a point of anguish it merges into the present. ’Oh most wicked speed; to post / With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!’ [340-1]. And as he moves from the present—’It is not’—to the future—’nor it cannot come to good’—Hamlet accepts an impotent adjustment: ’But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue!’ [342-3].
“As we can see, in the reactive scene there is a discrepancy between the impelling force and the character’s ability to cope with that force. The shape of the sequence traces the process of adjustment. . . . This [reactive] pattern . . . is very common in reactive sequences and indeed can be found in all drama from the Greeks through the present, from the Orient to the Occident. Again, it is his ability to erect on a common primal structure modulations of infinite suggestiveness that makes Shakespeare the supreme dramatic artist he is. . . .
“. . . If Hamlet [had] struggled to speak out, if he had schemed as to how he might attack the marriage, then we would elements of an active speech, obviously one that is fsr different from the original.” </p. 41>
1980 pen2
pen2
313-43 Spencer (ed. 1980): “The importance of this soliloquy lies in its establishing Hamlet’s personality and revealing his mental condition. The syntax is abrupt; the sentences progress by increments and interruptions; exclamations are followed by clarifications, questions, and imperatives.”
pen2: Dover Wilson MSH on Burbage without attribution
313 sallied] Spencer (ed. 1980): “Q2 reads ’sallied’ (which could be a spelling of sullied).. F reads ’solid’, which contrasts well with melt, │ Thaw, and resolve itself . . . and until the twentieth century was generally preferred by editors. But it may have an unpleasantly comic effect, especially if Richard Burbage, the actor who first played Hamlet, were putting on weight (compare He’s fat and scant of breath, 5.2.281). Sullied fits well into the feeling of contamination expressed by Hamlet; and for sullies (F ’sulleyes’) at 2.1.39 Q2 has the spelling ’sallies’.”
1982 ard2
ard2 ≈ Wilson
313 too too sallied] Jenkins (ed. 1982) argues that though too too would not ordinarily be used with a participle, the Q1 phrase “too much grieu’d and sallied” shows that “a participle was in the reporter’s recollection.” He admits that a play on both sullied and solid may be intended.
ard2: Furnivall;
Furness; Tennyson (
SQ 11: 490); Dowden; Wilson; Greg; Bowers; xref; //s;
contra Kökeritz (
Studia Neophilologica 30: 3-10; Crow,
Essays and Studies n.s. 8:8-9; //s
Tro. 1.3.113,
Shr. Ind. 2.129; S. Weiss (
SQ 10: 219-27); Bright, p. 128; Burton I.i.2 (3);
contra S. Warhaft (
ELH 28, 21-30; Paul 2: 37-8; Honigmann (
Stability, pp. 70, 134-6)
313 sallied] Jenkins (ed. 1982) argues for sallied as an alternate form of (rather than an error for) sullied, which is the correct word. Like Wilson, he thinks that “sullied enlarges the meaning as solid does not.” He thinks a corruption from sallied to solid is more likely than the other way around and that Q1 sallied shows that solid is not what was heard in performance at first (but cf. Chapman, Revenge of Bussy d’Ambois 5.4.7-9). The fact that sallies appears in text set by a different compositor [932] argues for the correctness of the word in 313.
ard2: Warhaft
313-14 melt . . . dewe] Jenkins (ed. 1982): “Warhaft stresses the contrast to ’self-slaughter’ [316] the resolving of the baser element into the higher, whereby Hamlet might return from the melancholy to normal health, or, if to become dew is to die, then from ’misery’ to ’felicity.’ But there is surely no thought here of being restored to health and happiness, only of being free of the ’flesh’ whether of its own deliquescence or through suicide. Cf. Paul on the desire to be dissolved and the necessity of living in the flesh (Philippians 1.23-4, as regularly cited in the Homily on the Fear of Death and elsewhere. Cf. also 2 Corinthians 5.1. To resolve (change into another form or element) into a dew (moisture) is another synonym for melt and thaw, and does not imply (as Warhaft would suggest) a further transformation into vapour”
1983 Bowers
Bowers: ard2; contra Bowers 1956 without attribution; ≈ Tanger without attribution
313 sallied] Bowers (1983, p. 293), in his review of Jenkins’ Hamlet, considers “solid” to be a sophistication of the text and dangerous because the agreement of Q1 and Q2 here could mean an error in Q2, relying on Q1 [and thus, I guess, make editors turn to F1 in this instance]. This is one instance, then, Bowers infers, where Q1/Q2 correspondence is useless evidence.
1983 Fortin
Fortin
313-43 Fortin (1983, p. 85): “From the very first soliloquy, in which Hamlet rues his ’too sullied flesh,’ he oscillates between the heroic way and the anti-heroic or kenotic way of patience. The heroic timber of Hamlet’s voice is easily recognized throughout the play: it is sounded early and clearly in the Hamlet whose ’fates cry out’ to him [668; 1.4.81], and in the hero who is eager to engage in ’enterprises of great pitch and moment’ [1740; 3.1.85] in an effort to set the time aright.”
1984 chal
chal ≈ vand
313 sallied] Wilkes (ed. 1984): “prob. a variant spelling of ’sullied’ (cf. [932]) although the possible meaning ’assailed’ cannot be excluded”
1985 cam4
cam4; Bowers; Jenkins
313 sallied] solid Edwards (ed. 1985): "So F. Q2 reads ’sallied’. Q1 has ’too much griev’d and sallied flesh’. Q2 makes considerable use of Q1 in this part of the play, and the coincidence of a very unusual spelling argues strongly that Q2 derives from Q1. Q2 derives from Q1. Q1 is a ’reported’ text. What did the reporter hear on stage to make him write ’griev’d and sallied flesh’? It is argued that ’sallied’ means ’sullied.’ The evidence is in 2.1.39 [932], where Q2 has ’sallies’ and F ’sulleyes’, and [LLL 5.2.352 (0000)], ’unsallied’. (An adducement by Bowers and Jenkins of ’sally’ = ’sully’ in Dekker’s Patient Grissil, 1.1.12, is based on a misunderstanding of the line.) Even if ’sallied’ means ’sullied’, it is quite certain that ’griev’d and sallied’ is a corruption. If ’griev’d’ is wrong, ’sallied’ may be wrong. I suspect that ’sullied’ was the Q1 reporter’s creative mishearing of ’solid’ and that ’griev’d and sallied’ was his reconstruction of the misheard phrase. That Q2 should repeat such a strange word is no more surprising than many other mysterious choices. What, for example, did the Q2 compositor mean at [3603-4]: ’it is very sully and hot’? (F: ’soultry’.) The case for ’sullied’ is torturous, though it is the reading of most modern editions. The case for ’solid’ is simple. It is the unequivocal reading of one of the two authoritative texts, and it suits the context much better. Hamlet’s lament is that his flesh is too solid to melt away, and that he is forbidden by God to do away with himself. In the context of the speech, it would hardly be surprising if Shakespeare heard the word ’sullied’ as he wrote ’solid’ and that the reporter caught only the one unexpressed part of the pun."
1985 Fisher
Fisher: standard
313 sallied] Fisher (1985, p. 4): “Whereas ‘solid’ lends itself well to a comparative description, ‘sullied’ cannot be compared and ‘too, too’ is out of place: ‘sullied’ like ‘pregnant’ has no degrees, ‘solid’ has.”
1985 cam4
cam4
313-43 Edwards (ed. 1985, p. 41): < p. 41> “Such passionate attachment to his father, such contempt for his uncle, such disgust with his mother, may seem pathological, what Eliot would call ‘in excess of the facts.’ Hamlet’s indignation does indeed go deeper than the ‘facts’ but its source is not morbid.” </ p. 41>
1987 oxf4
oxf4 contra Wilson +
313-43 Hibbard (ed. 1987, pp. 382-4), <p. 382> after reviewing Wilson’s argument </p. 382><p.383> re
sallied/sullied explains why he chooses
solid. (1) F1 could be Shn, either a 1st choice or a revision; (2) Q2= Q1
sallied, which makes Q2 suspect; (3) Wilson’s metaphor of begrimed snow does not fit the images, pointing out that when snow melts the grime remains; (4) Wilson’s argument about the fatness of Burbage is anachronistic. (5) Sh. often has images of melting. </p.383><p. 384> Hamlet wants his flesh to melt. Hibbard ends with quotations from Son. 44 and 45. </p. 384>
oxf4 standard; OED
313 too too] Hibbard (ed. 1987): “altogether too, much too.” He says the form for emphasis “was very common from about 1540-1660 (OED 4).”
1988 bev2
bev2: standard
313 sallied] Bevington (ed. 1988): “defiled. (The early quartos read sallied, the Folio solid.).”
1993 Lupton&Reinhard
Lupton& Reinhard: Freud
313 sallied] Lupton & Reinhard (1993, pp. 60-1): <p. 60>“The Quarto reading (‘sallied,’ a variant of ‘sullied’) emphasizes the bad conscience of Hamlet, which bolster’s Freud’s Oedipal interpretation of the play, in which Hamlet’s mourning for his father is tainted by his identification with Claudius. The Folio’s ‘solid,’ on the other hand, supported by the soliloquy’s language of dissolution, materializes the specific gravity of the flesh, its sodden resistance to flights of fancy that ‘characterize’ Hamlet; in this reading, the solidity of Hamlet’s flesh rankly burgeons from the corporeality of Gertrude, whose bestial ‘increase of appetite’ [328] leads Hamlet to break into the famous
interruptio, ‘Frailty, thy name is woman’ [330]. A psychoanalytic philology might argue that both readings must be valid—not, however, as alternatives available for adjudication or compromise, but as rival readings ‘sullied” by their coexistence or mutual cancellation. Echoing anxiously through each other, the two words weigh down the symbolic agon of signification (the competing meanings of ‘sullied and ‘solid’) with the heaviness of </p. 60><p. 61> the pure signifier (the near-homophony of the words), staging at the linguistic level the structural ambivalence in the soliloquy—as well as in the play and its psychoanalytic criticism—between mourning for the father and disgust with the mother.” </p. 61>
1993 Lupton&Reinhard
Lupton & Reinhard
313-43 Lupton & Reinhard (1993, pp. 109-15): <p. 109>“Hamlet’s first and third soliloquies are crucial sites of this [Hamlet’s, the play’s] maternal imagining. [See L&R in genre doc.] . . . The first soliloquy, recited before any exposure of the crime, counterpoints mourning and guilt, a kinship even stronger in the First Quarto, whose soliloquy begins, ‘O that this too much
griev’d and sallied flesh Would melt to nothing’ [Q1CLN 202-3] (emphasis added). The passage’s mythological allusions show Hamlet identifying with the guilty Claudius even as he emblematically distinguishes uncle and father: [quotes 313-37
Hercules with emphasis added ‘
Hyperion to a satyr . . .
Like Niobe, all tears . . .
but no more like my father Than I to Hercules.]. Hamlet’s chiastic analogies, ‘Hyperion to a satyr . . .
but no more like my father Than I to Hercules,’ locate him in the place of the satyr-king, diagnosing through allusion the sullied (and ‘griev’d’) condition of his flesh. We could say that Hamlet knows
that he knows, but not
what he knows, since the object of knowledge (the crime of Claudius) also provides the means of knowledge, through guilty identification. [see n. 728] It is for precisely this reason that Hamlet falls into the nontragic relation to knowledge sketched by Aristotle: he is ‘in possession of the facts’ but ‘fails’ to act upon his knowledge.
“Intervening between these two paternal figures, however, is a mythical mother in mourning, ‘Niobe all tears’ [333]. This classical exemplum of excessive grief offers at once a counterexample to Gertrude’s failings as a widow and an emblem of ostentatious tears, the theatricality of Hamlet’s rejected ‘forms, moods, shapes of grief’ [263]. The character of Gertrude, both like and unlike Niobe, is ‘charactered’ or written through and as mythological allusion. Gertrude has very few lines in the </p. 111><p. 112> play; instead, the play imagines her through descriptions by others (the Ghost, Hamlet) and analogues in myth, literature, and allegory (Hecuba, Dido, Eve, Niobe, Lust). The projective mechanism operative in the construction of Gertrude is epitomized in Hamlet’s angry line, rhetorically at once apostrophe and interruptio, ‘Frailty, thy name is woman’ [330], in which Hamlet combines invocation and invective, summoning in order to denigrate. . . .
“Intertextually, the soliloquy’s sequence of classical allusions indicates the play’s relation to the classical itself: an identification not with the Apollonian or, better,
Horatian ideals of moderation emblematized by Hyperion, but with the Senecan excess and generic adulteration of the ‘satyr-play.’ The play identifies with that comic monstrosity of mixed forms, the ‘tragical-comical-historical-pastoral’ [1444], named in Polonius’s speech on genres that alludes to ‘Seneca’ [1448]: </p. 112> <p. 113> quotes 1444-50]. . . .
“Psychoanalytically, the first soliloquy performs two kinds of work for the play: it draws the schematic opposition between the good and the bad father, and it presents Gertrude as failed widow, hasty in mourning because lustful in bed. The two tasks are related insofar as the repudiation of the mother provides the tools of demarcation that enable the subject’s formative splitting by the introjected lack of a father. In
Hamlet, the paternal imago itself is split, one half representing the son’s guilty desire, the other the purity and vengefulness of the father’s law. . . the opposition between King Hamlet and Claudius is specular rather than symbolic, as evidenced in the amount of energy spent maintaining the two brothers on opposite sides of the mythological cosmos. [See Margaret Ferguson, “
Hamlet: Letters and Spirits.”] Or, . . . the (m)Other of demand—‘Niobe all tears’—has been insufficiently dialecticized as Oedipal desire, rendering unstable the moral opposition between Hyperion and the satyr, a faultiness of Oedipal ‘resolution’ systemic to the foundation of paternal law on the effacement of maternal
jouissance.” </p. 113><p. 114>
“The reference to Niobe signals the pre-Oedipal catastrophe informing Hamlet’s post-Oedipal drama of guilty identification . . . Crucial here is the first soliloquy’s emphasis on the orality of desire . . . [quotes 327-9 ‘Why, she . . . fed on’]. In psychoanalytic terms, this ‘increase of appetite’ can be read in relation to pre-Oedipal fantasies of violence performed by and against the infant (Klein), the introjection of the father as ego ideal, which ‘dissolves’ the Oedipus complex (Freud), and the efflorescence of desire in the difference between demand and need (Lacan). The construction of Gertrude as voracious mother functions in all three theoretical narratives [Klein, Freud, Lacan], facilitates the passage between them, and points to the melancholic remainder of their movement.
“The chiasmus, ‘Hyperion to a satyr . . .I to Hercules’ crosses over the figure of the mourning mother, ‘Niobe all tears’: the passage rhetorically stages Oedipal dissolution over the figure of maternal mourning. . . . </p. 114> <p. 115>
“Finally, Niobe, becoming her tears, is a favored Renaissance figure of narcissistic identification with loss; she thus becomes an image of melancholic petrification to which Hamlet and Hamlet are subject. Niobe’s metamorphosis materializes the watery fate imagined in the soliloquy’s opening line: [quotes 313-14]. Not only do these lines identify Hamlet and Gertrude in the reflecting pool of Ovidian metamorphosis, but they also melt, thaw, and resolve into the Ghost’s words to Hamlet’s two scenes later: ‘Adieu, adieu, adieu. Remember me’ [776]. Spoken as the rising sun condenses the morning dew, the line ‘condenses’ mourning and morning, ‘adieu’ and ‘a dew.’ The play of signifiers manifests Oedipal resolution as Oedipal dissolution, a dissolving of identifications and significations into the liquidated letters of maternal mourning.” </p. 115>
I may split some of this CN into separate TLN docs, but the argument benefits from being put together.
Kerrigan (1994) also makes a pt about a dew without referring to L&R [see Freud doc] but they probably worked independently.
1994 Kerrigan
Kerrigan
313 too too] Kerrigan (1994, p. 80) sees “too too” as part of a pattern of repetition, of hendiadys, that repeats the dual nature of woman, angel and devil, virgin and whore.
See Kerrigan in Freudian critƒ
1995 Thomsen
Thomsen: see list below
313-14 Thomsen (1995, pp. 19-24) finds in Hamlet’s image of melting an analogue in Golding’s Ovid (5.533-43) where the nymph Cyane, mourning the insult to her fountain goddess, metamorphoses into a liquid.
xerox in soliloquy file. Her idea seems plausible to me because Sh was steeped in Ovid.
Ed. note:Thomsen (p. 23 n.1) helpfully has a list of some major editors who support sullied or solid:
Sullied: ard2, parc, pel2 [note: cam1 lists an anon. conj. which must be ante 1866 and thus far earlier than ard2]
Solid: oxf4, cam4
1996 Brown
Brown
313-43 Brown (1996, rpt. Greenhaven, 1999, p. 55): “in its harsh transitions, repetitions, progressive imagery, questioning—’Must I remember?’—and in its sudden stoppages, which are like seizures, his very being seems to lie open to the audience’s apprehension. The soliloquy stops finally when Hamlet address his ’heart’ and not the audience; he may have heard Horatio and others entering or, perhaps, he is so aware of his own helplessness that he allows his thoughts to go no further. . . .”
1997 Bradshaw
Bradshaw
313-41 Bradshaw (1997, p. 10): “The Elizabethan audiences who first heard Hamlet must have been startled and enthralled by the emotional intensity quite unlike anything that had been heard before on an English stage, Yet one measure of that intensity is that it seems unreasoning and uncontrolled. Hamlet has just been giving his mother and everybody else a bad time by insisting on the authenticity of his feelings for his dead father, but then, as soon as he is left alone to soliloquize, his father is barely mentioned; his speech is overwhelmingly concerned with his mother and her remarriage. It is also so torrential, and tormented, that its syntax cannot tell us whether the final reference to incest is climactic or a kind of furious afterthought.”
1997 OED
OED
313 sallied] The only trans. verb form means “to bring [something] to the position of ‘sally.’”
Ed. note: In this case, the word sally has to do with bell ringing (sb.2). But of course, Sh. might use an intrans. verb in a trans. sense. as in OED v.2: “Of a warlike force: to issue suddenly from a place of defence or retreat in order to make an attack.”
1999 Dessen&Thomson
Dessen&Thomson
313 all but Hamlet] Dessen & Thomson(1999): all but is a frequent locution in Renaissance plays for manet [found in F1].
2001 Poole
Poole
313-14 Poole (2001, p. 205): “Hamlet wishes his flesh ’to melt. . . itself,’ not ’be melted’ by some external force. Reflexivity usurps passivity. Again, scientific processes are envisaged as spontaneous, working in a kind of casual loop sealed off from external agents.”
2002 Blake
Blake: hal (1844, 1:39 ): Ray 1674
313 too too]
Blake (2002, pp. 11-12), <p. 11> objecting to the current practice of eds. to ignore the colloquial flavor of the repetition </p. 11> <p. 12> says, “There would seem no reason to doubt that
too too was informal in register and that it and similar repetitions are often used to deflate what might otherwise be overly pretentious utterance.” </p. 12>
Blake
313 sallied] Blake (2002, p. 11): Once the colloquial register of too too is granted, he can make an argument for sallied, meaning something related to sally forth, “and may be used here in the informal sense of Hamlet’s flesh being thrust into a [. . . ] Denmark which is a prison to him” and where he is assaulted by the vices of the court. Blake also argues for an informal register for repetitions in 316, 319, 333.
2005 Shakespeare. Journal of the British Shakespeare Association
Holderness
313-14 Holderness (2005, pp. 164-5 ): <p. 164> “’Solid’ or ’sullied’ as the variant texts deliver the metaphor, intractable or contaminated, the movement is the same: to undo Creation, to de-compose, to </p. 164> <p. 165> reduce being back to its original constituent elements of moisture and dust. It is only by wishing the self could be entirely other--not conscious, not thinking, not suffering, not
there--that Hamlet can approach the night where his father lies, and respond with the silence of the death to the question ’Who’s there?’ {TLN 4].” </p. 165>
2006 ARD3Q2
ARD3Q2
313-43 Thompson & Taylor (ed. 2006. p. 21) point out that Hamlet, in the first soliloquy, is alone, a condition not actually mandated by the texts for the “To be” (1710-42) or in the Q2-only “How all occasions” (1743+26-1743+60).
ard3q2
313-43 Thompson & Taylor (ed. 2006): “Hamlet’s first soliloquy reveals pent-up emotion through its exclamations, questions and expressions of pain.”
ard3q2: Q1; //s; macd
313 sallied] Thompson & Taylor (ed. 2006): “assailed, besieged. Q1 also reads ’sallied’—’O that this too much griev’d and sallied flesh’. F’s ’solid’ provides a more specific sense for melt (and see 2H4 3.1.47-9 : ’and the continent, / Weary of solid firmness, melt itself / Into the sea’) but which chimes unhappily for some readers with Gertrude’s later statement that Hamlet is fat (see [3756 CN). Many editors emend sallied to ’sullied’, meaning ’contaminated’: see the Princess’s reference to her ’maiden honour’ as an ’unsulllied lily’ in LLL 5.2.351-2 , where both Q and F texts read ’unsallied’. MacDonald glosses sallied as ’sullied’, which, despite his commitment to F, he thinks ’nearer the depth of Hamlet’s mood’ than solid.”
ard3q2: //s;
313 melt] Thompson & Taylor (ed. 2006): “The idea of annihilation by melting or dissolving also occurs in R2 (’O that I were a mockery king of snow / . . . To melt myself away in water-drops’, 4.1.260-2) and in Ant. ’Here I am Antony, / Yet cannot hold this visible shape’, 4.14.13-14).”
2007 Fletcher
Fletcher
313-43 Fletcher, p. 92. "When a character like Hamlet speaks to himself, he watches the movement of his own mind changing with infinite speed through metaphoric transfers, and in this respect his speech comprises a condensed version of the rites of passage; the fundamental structure of social change." Fletcher refers then to anthropology’s theory of a 3-part movement of rites of passage: separation, a liminal in-between phase, followed by a re-integrated phase. Fletcher compares the rite of passage to the soliloquy’s action: "the speaker enhances the role of separation from the self to increase incorporation into the self, through a liminal loosening of all conventional stereotypes." Fletcher admits that the separation never is meant to be complete; the character holds onto the old ideas.
