Line 376 - Commentary Note (CN) 
Commentary notes (CN):
1. SMALL CAPS Indicate editions. Notes for each commentator are divided into three parts:
In the 1st two lines of a record, when the name of the source text (the siglum) is printed in SMALL CAPS, the comment comes from an EDITION; when it is in normal font, it is derived from a book, article, ms. record or other source. We occasionally use small caps for ms. sources and for works related to editions. See bibliographies for complete information (in process).
2. How comments are related to predecessors' comments. In the second line of a record, a label "without attribution" indicates that a prior writer made the same or a similar point; such similarities do not usually indicate plagiarism because many writers do not, as a practice, indicate the sources of their glosses. We provide the designation ("standard") to indicate a gloss in common use. We use ≈ for "equivalent to" and = for "exactly alike."
3. Original comment. When the second line is blank after the writer's siglum, we are signaling that we have not seen that writer's gloss prior to that date. We welcome correction on this point.
4. Words from the play under discussion (lemmata). In the third line or lines of a record, the lemmata after the TLN (Through Line Number] are from Q2. When the difference between Q2 and the authors' lemma(ta) is significant, we include the writer's lemma(ta). When the gloss is for a whole line or lines, only the line number(s) appear. Through Line Numbers are numbers straight through a play and include stage directions. Most modern editions still use the system of starting line numbers afresh for every scene and do not assign line numbers to stage directions.
5. Bibliographic information. In the third line of the record, where we record the gloss, we provide concise bibliographic information, expanded in the bibliographies, several of which are in process.
6. References to other lines or other works. For a writer's reference to a passage elsewhere in Ham. we provide, in brackets, Through Line Numbers (TLN) from the Norton F1 (used by permission); we call these xref, i.e., cross references. We call references to Shakespearean plays other than Ham. “parallels” (//) and indicate Riverside act, scene and line number as well as TLN. We call references to non-Shakespearean works “analogues.”
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.
Notes for lines 0-1017 ed. Bernice W. Kliman
| 376 Ham. {A} <He> was a man take him for all in all | |
|---|
376 377 2440 2441 24425th century BCE Sophocles (495-406 BCE)
Sophocles
376-7 Sophocles (Trachinae [Women of Trachis] trans. Hugh Lloyd-Jones, ed. Sophocles. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1994. “These are the plot and the action, mother, of which you are convicted, for which may avenging Justice and the Erinys punish you! And if right permits it, I utter a curse on you! And right does permit it, since you have made it right for me, killing the noblest man upon the earth, one such as you shall never see again!” (v. 805-12).
Ed. note: She is guilty of no more than stupidity perhaps, but silently accepts her son’s accusation; she had sent Heracles a poisoned robe (which she had thought a love charm) because he loved another woman and had her brought to his wife’s home.
1748 Whalley
Whalley: Sophocles
376-7 A was . . .
like againe]
Whalley (1748, pp. 67-8): <p. 67>
Eugenius: “ . . . the Eulogy he gives of his deceased Father, seems to comprehend a finished Character. [quotes 376-7] This will be thought, perhaps, too much the </p. 67><p. 68> Suggestion of Nature, and of the human Heart, to be taken from a Place of
Sophocles, to which it has a great Affinity. [quotes Greek; see Loeb]. Trachin. v. 821. [v. 812 is correct] & seq. ‘
In him you kill’d the best of Men below, And ne’er will look upon his like again.’” </p. 68>
1752 Dodd
Dodd ≈ Whalley + in magenta underlined
376 A was a man] Dodd (1752, 1:219): “This (as Mr. Whalley observes in his Enquiry into the Learning of Shakespear) will perhaps be thought too much the suggestion of nature and the human heart, to be taken from a place of Sophocles, to which it has great affinity; [quotes Greek] Trachin, v. 821. Which in the most literal translation, is, ‘You’ve kill’d the very best of men on earth, And shall not look upon his like again.’ In [Cym. 1.1.19-22 (26-29)], there is a character very similar to this; ‘— a creature such As to seek through the regions of the earth, For one his like, there wou’d be something failing In him that shou’d compare.’ See [1.1.20 (00)].”
Ed. note: Like Walley, Dodd mistakes the verse number.
376 A was a man]
Richardson (1774, rpt. 1812, p. 88): “Returning from his reverie, he mentions his character to Horatio, not by a particular detail, but in a summary manner, as if it were the result of a preceding enumeration.”
Ed. note: cap (1768) had a SD-symbol meaning that Hamlet says the previous line “My father,— methinks” &c. in a reverie.
1805 Seymour
Seymour
376-7 Seymour (1805, 2:148): “This, I believe, is not rightly pointed. I take it to be a though twice broken or interrupted. Horatio had called Hamlet’s father ‘a goodly king.’—‘O!’ exclaims the prince, ‘he was a man,’ but not knowing which excellence to prefer in describing him, he breaks off with the general remark—‘take him for all in all—’ yet here again, not knowing adequate terms of applause, he concludes abruptly—‘I shall not look upon his like again.’”
1808 Weston
Weston see n. 377
376
1855 Keightley
Keightley
376 all] Keightley (1855, p.305): “The figure Aposiopesis occurs in Shakespeare, as in all poets, ancient and modern, whose style is at all dramatic. By its aid, we have shown in various places of Virgil and Homer, many grammatical difficulties may be removed. The critics seem not to have observed it in— [quotes H8 3.2] ‘He was a man, take him for all in all . . . I shall not look upon his like again.’—Ham. 1.2. He is about to give a character of his father, when grief stops him.”
1856 hud1
376 A was a man] Hudson (ed. 1856): “Some would read this as it it were pointed thus: ‘He was a man: take him for all in all,’ &c.; laying marked stress on man as if it were meant to intimate a correction of Horatio’s ‘goodly king.’ There is, we suspect, no likelihood that the Poet had any such thought, as there is no reason why he should have had. H.”
1867 Keightley
Keightley: Seymour without attribution
376 all] Keightley (1867, p. 286): “There is an evident aposiopesis here.”
1870 Schmitz
Schmitz: Lüders, Schlegel
376 Schmitz (1870, pp. 364-5): <p. 364>“In the German Shakespeare-Jahrbuch [4:385], Mr. Fredinand Lüders has put forth a new explanation of the famous lines in Hamlet, </p. 364> <p. 365> [quotes 376-7]. He finds fault with Schlegel’s translation which is indeed not quite what it should be, in as much as he introduces the word ‘nur,’ of which there is no trace in the original. But when Mr. Lüders tries to illustrate the line by a reference to the common phrase, ‘he is to me all in all,’ which has exactly the same meaning as the German ‘Er ist mir Alles in Allem,’ he overlooks the words ‘Take him for,’ which give an entirely different turn to the meaning of the phrase. No one who is but moderately acquainted with the English phraseology can doubt for a moment Shakespeare’s meaning, which is simply this: ‘If you take him for what he really was, if you take his bad qualities as well as his good ones, you will find the result to be, that he was man the like of whom we shall not see again.’ This is the sense in which the line has been rightly interpreted by all commentators and translators, and even the partiality of a son must be satisfied with such praise. No man can be all in all, though an individual may say, this man is to me, or with me all in all.
“In common with every Englishman who has given the matter a thought, I must utterly reject the translation proposed by Mr. Lüders, because it entirely misses the meaning of the original. Spring Grove, Middlesex. L Schmitz.” </p. 365>
1872 hud2
hud2 = hud1
376 A was a man]
1929 trav
trav
376 man]
Travers (ed. 1929) says that the American actor Edwin Booth (d. 1852) emphasized
man.
1939 kit2
kit2: Clark and Wright; analogues
376-7 Kittredge (ed. 1939): "The Folio puts a comma after man, a colon after all; the Second Quarto lacks both. The Quarto text would mean, as Clark and Wright interpret it, ’He was, take him all in all, a man upon whose like I shall not look again.’ Cf. Mabbe, Celestina (ed. Tudor Translations, p. 96: ’Take him all together, and for all in all, you shall not finde such anotjer.’ For the loose (but common) construction, cf. Ford and Dekker, The Sun’s Darling,, iii, 1,2,3: "Thou hadst a body the four elements/ Dwelt never in a fairer:" Greene, The Defence of Cony Catching, 1592 (ed. Grossart, XI, 88): ’Such foolish affection towards one she knew not what he was, nor whither he would.’ "
kit2: JC parallel
376 a man] Kittredge (ed. 1939): "Cf. [JC 5.5.73-5 (2722-4): ’His life was gentle, and the elements/So mix’d in him that Nature might stand up/And say to all the world, "this was a man!" ’ "
1961 SQ
Reno
376 Reno (1961, p. 112): “Is it going too far to suggest, then, that in the first scene of the last act Hamlet finds his noble father where Gertrude told him not to look--"in the dust"? To suggest that Hamlet has come somehow to see the death of his father in relation to the universal condition that is represented by the graveyard and the symbol of dust? Then he has somehow become aware of how false were his terms of comparison earlier in the play--’Hyperion’s curls; the front of Jove himself; An eye like Mars. . . A station like the herald of Mercury’ [2440-2]--and that he spoke more wisely than perhaps he knew in [376] when he said of his father, ’He was a man, take him for all in all.’?”
1980 pen2
pen2
376 A . . . man] Spencer (ed. 1980): “Hamlet has a view of moral worth largely based on stoical ideals. This is elaborated in his description of Horatio in 3.2.75-81.”
1982 ard2
ard2: ard1
376 a man] Jenkins (ed. 1982): “ ’Edwin Booth . . . paused after "man", giving it as if something higher than "king" ’ (Dowden). Rightly so. He was the embodiment of the ideal of manhood. Cf. 2439. JC 5.5.75, ’Nature might stand up And say to all the world "This was a man!" ’ ”
ard2: survey
376 all in all]] Jenkins (ed. 1982): “perfect in all things (with take subjunctive rather than imperative). Often taken to mean, as in modern use, ’all things considered’, ’on the whole’. But when Shakespeare uses all in all adverbially, it implies not qualification but intensification (= ’entirely’), as in H5 1.1.42; 0th. 4.1.88, 262. The sense here is not that of weighing one thing against another but of accumulating them all. In 2438-46 it is the accumulation of perfections that assures ’a man’. Hamlet’s father, then, may be taken as a man complete in every particular, and so as the sum and pattern of excellence. Cf. Mabbe, Celestina (perhaps an echo), where a list of perfections is brought to a climax in ’Take him all together, and for all in all, you shall not find such another’. This sense of completeness or perfection is borne out by other Elizabethan instances: e.g. Stubbes, Anatomy of Abuses (New Shakspere Soc., 1. 29) ’he is all in all; yea, so perfect . . .’ ; R. Carew, The Excellency of the English Tongue (Smith, Elizn Critical Essays, 2.293), ’Will you have all in all for prose and verse? take the miracle of our age Sir Philip Sidney’. See, for an illuminating discussion, D. Barrett in Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 62, 164-8. Cf. Tilley A 133, ’All in all and all in every part’, a proverb which T. W. Baldwin (Literary Genetics of Shakspere’s Poems, pp. 157ff.) shows to derive from the neo-Platonic doctrine of the soul.’ ”
1987 oxf4
oxf4: ard2
376 man^] Hibbard (ed. 1987): "The punctuation here [man.], supported by that of F [man,], is Jenkins’s, who argues convincingly that all in all means ‘the epitome of all that a man should be’, ‘the sum and pattern of excellence’. He also draws attention to the relevance here of the proverb ‘All in all and all in every part’ (Tilley A133)."
1995 OED 2nd edition on Internet
OED
376 A] OED: “he is "the typical form," from which developed heo, hye, hee, and ha, a, the latter representing coloquial speech in drama and "still a prevalent dialect form."
2006 ard3q2
ard3q2: //
376 a man] Thompson & Taylor (ed. 2006): “Clearly Hamlet regards his father as an ideal of manhood; see Antony’s eulogy of the dead Brutus: ’Nature might stand up / And say to all the world, "This was a man!"’ (JC 5.5.74-5).”