Line 314 - 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.
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Notes for lines 0-1017 ed. Bernice W. Kliman
| 314 Thaw and resolue it selfe into a dewe, | 1.2.130 |
|---|
1773 v1773
v1773: Jonson
314 resolue] Steevens (ed. 1773): “Resolve means the same as dissolve. Ben Jonson uses the word in his Volpone, and in the same sense: ‘Forth the resolved corners of his eyes.’ ”
1778 v1778
v1778 = v1773 +
314 resolue] Steevens (ed. 1778): “Again, in The Country Girll, 1647: ‘—my swoln grief, resolved in these tears.’ ”Steevens.”
1780 mals1
mals1
314 resolue] Steevens (apud Malone, 1780, 1:758 n. 4) sees in LC 296 “resolv’d my reason into a dew” [i.e. into tears in evns1], a parallel to Ham. 314.
1785 v1785
v1785 = v1778
314 resolue]
1787 ann
ann = v1785
314 resolue]
ann 6:69 on Tim. 4. 3. 439 [2089]: “The sea’s a thief, whose liquid surge resolves The moon into salt tears.”
314 resolue] Henley (Tim. p. 69): “In Hamlet, the verb resolve is used precisely in the same manner:‘The sea’s a thief, whose liquid surge resolves The moon into salt tears.’ Henley.”
1790 mal
mal = v1785
314 resolue]
1790- mAnon
mAnon
314 resolve itself into a dew] Anon (ms. notes in Malone, ed. 1790): “See [R2 4.1.262 (2184) ‘To melt myself away in water-drops!’].”
1793 v1793
v1793 = mal
314 resolue]
1793- mSteevens
mSteevens as in v1803
314 resolve itself into a dew] Steevens (ms. notes in Steevens, ed. 1793): “Pope has employed the same word in his version of the second Iliad, 44: ‘Resolves to air, and mixes with the note.’”
1793- mReed
mReed as in v1803; Steevens inserts this comment at note #3 after his printed quote from The country Girl
314 resolve itself into a dew] Reed (ms. notes in Steevens, ed. 1793): “Again in Giles Fletcher’s Russe Commonwealth 1591’In winter time when all is covered with snow the dead bodies (so many as die all the winter time) are piled up in a house in the suburbs like billets on a woodstack, as hard with the frost as a very stone, ‘till the spring lids come and resolve the frost, what time every man taketh his dead friend & committeth him to the ground.’ Reed.”
1803 v1803
v1803 = v1793 + mSteevens
314 resolue] Steevens (ed. 1803): “Pope has employed the same word in his version of the second Iliad, 44: ‘Resolves to air, and mixes with the night.’”
v1803 = mReed
314 resolue] Reed (ed. 1803): “Again, in Giles Fletcher’s Russe Commonwealth, 1591: ‘In winter time, when all is covered with snow, the dead bodies (so many as die all the winter time) are piled up in a house in the suburbsm like billets on a woodstack, as hard with the frost as a very stone, ’till the spring tide come and resolve the frost, what time every man taketh his dead friend and committeth him to the ground.’ ”
1805 Seymour
Seymour: Steevens +
314 resolue] Seymour (1805, 2:146): “Resolve, says Mr. Steevens, is the same as ‘dissolve.’
“I cannot directly agree with the critic: ‘resolve,’ seems to have an active, as dissolve a neutral sense.”
1813 v1813
v1813= v1803
314 resolue]
1819 cald1
cald1
314 resolue] 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.’ . . . Hen.”
The 2H4 ref is telling because the combination of solid and melting is also in the 4to, 1600, E4v4-5.
1821 v1821
v1821 = v1813
314 resolue]
1822 Nares
Nares
314 resolue] Nares (1822, apud Clark & Wright, ed. 1872): “Lyly’s Euphues, p. 38: ‘I could be content to resolve myself into teares, to rid thee of trouble.’”
1826 sing1
sing1
314 resolue] Singer (ed. 1826): “To resolve had anciently the same meaning as to dissolve. ‘To thaw or resolve and melted. To till the ground, and resolve it into dust.’—Cooper. This is another word in a Latin sense; but it is not peculiar to Shakespeare.”
1832 cald2
cald2 = cald1 +
314 resolue]
Caldecott (ed. 1832): “The 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.’
Shirly’s Poems. 8vo. 1646. p. 57.”
1833 valpy
valpy: standard
314 resolue] Valpy (ed. 1833): “Dissolve.”
1843 col1
col1 standard
314 resolue] Collier (ed. 1843): ‘Resolve’ is dissolve. See [4:92].”
His glossary offers the same def. and the same two ref., to 4:92 and to 7:207 [i.e. Ham.]
1854 del2
del2: standard
314 resolue] Delius (ed. 1854): “resolve = dissolve.”
1856 hud1
hud1 ≈ sing1 without attribution; cald1 without attribution
314 resolue] Hudson (ed. 1856): “To resolve had anciently the same meaning as to dissolve. ‘To thaw or resolve that which is frozen; regelo. —The snow is resolved and melted. To till the ground, and resolve it into dust.’—Cooper.”
1856 sing2
sing2 = sing1
314 resolue]
1858 col3
col3 = col1 +
314 resolue] Collier (ed. 1858): “as in [Jn. 5.4.24 (2485), 2:200]: —‘as a form of wax Resolveth from his figure ‘gainst the fire’.”
1865 hal
hal; standard def. + new analogues
314 resolue] Halliwell (ed. 1865): “Resolve, to dissolve or melt. ‘This metall can nat be resolved without a marvayllous sharpe fyre.’ Palsgrve, 1530.
“‘Take aqua vite, gomme of Arabik, and vernesse, of ich ilche meche, and let him stonde tyl the gomme be resolvyd.’—MS. xv. Cent.”
1872 cln1
cln1 = Henley on Tim. without attribution; Nares
314 resolue] Clark & Wright (ed. 1872): “Nares quotes from Lyly’s Euphues, p. 38: ‘I could be content to resolve nyself into teares, to rid thee of trouble.’”
1872 hud2
hud2 = hud1 (minus all but gloss)
314 resolue]
1877 v1877
v1877: Steevens, cln1’s Nares without attribution to cln1; cald
314 resolue]
1880 meik
meik: standard +
314 resolue] Meikeljohn (ed. 1880): “ . . . But the nouns resolve and resolution have just the opposite meaning.
1881 hud3
hud3 = hud2 +
314 resolue] Hudson (ed. 1881): “The three words melt, thaw, and resolve, all signifying the same thing, are used merely for emphasis.”
1929 trav
trav
314 resolue]
Travers (ed. 1929): “dissolve back.”
1947 cln2
cln2: standard
314 resolue] Rylands (ed. 1947): “dissolve.”
1980 pen2
pen2: standard
314 resolue] Spencer (ed. 1980): “dissolve.”
1987 oxf4
oxf4
314 resolue] Hibbard (ed. 1987): "dissolve (OED v. 1). Compare [Jn. 5.4.24-5 (2485-6), ‘even as a form of wax │ Resolveth from his figure ‘gainst the fire.’ "
1984 chal
chal
314 resolue] Wilkes (ed. 1984): “change into a simpler form”
1987 Mercer
Mercer
314-18 Mercer (1987, pp. 146-7): <p. 146> His soliloquy “shows Hamlet himself reeling in dizzy horror beneath his mask of melancholy. . . . </p. 146> <p. 147> But even in soliloquy . . . Hamlet cannot go straight to the reality of his pain.”The first lines are stylized, hiding the cause of his anguish. He speaks of the dissolution of his flesh, but he is thinking of “the gross sexual appetite in his mother and his uncle . . . .” Mercer does not sense any commitment by Hamlet to death. His images of snow and dew are far from repugnant. “This coolly sanitising image suppresses almost completely the reality of . . . the unspeakable putrefaction of the flesh. ’Dew’ is not exactly the most obvious word for the final product of that ghastly process. . .. To wish that suicide were not prohibited by God is very obviously to stress that it is. There is no serious intent. . . . </p. 147> <p. 148> [The speech] seems very close to . . . the performance of melancholy, not merely because it inevitably sounds like a memory of Montaigne, but because it does not . . . bring the actuality of pain into sharper focus; rather it blurs it into this eloquent ennui.” </p. 148>
1994 KIiman
Kliman
314 into a dewe] Kliman (1994): Dew here echoes the dew that Horatio senses with the dawn, with all those connections to dawn.
1994 Kerrigan
Kerrigan
314 resolue into a dewe]
Kerrigan (
Perfection, 1994, pp. 44-5) <p.44> takes
resolve into a dew as an alternative to suicide </p.44>. <p. 45> It also “punningly foreshadows the ghost’s dawn-prompted ‘Adieu, adieu, adieu. . . ’ Hamlet at some level resists the ghost.’ Dew means purification. Kerrigan argues for a reading of
Hamlet as lyric poetry not just as what can be played on stage, and that’s how a passage from before the ghost enters Hamlet’s life can nevertheless be used to show that Hamlet resists the ghost. </p. 45>
Ed. note: Hamlet’s repetition of the Ghost’s words are adew, adew [796].
2006 ard3q2
ard3q2: standard
314 resolue] Thompson & Taylor (ed. 2006): “dissolve”
2007 Mallin
Mallin
314 a dewe]
Mallin (2007, pp. 59-61): <p. 59> “Punning with aplomb, he hopes that his sullied/sallied flesh would ’melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew,’ or adieu. ’A-dieu: ’to God.’ . . . </p. 59> <p. 60> The question [of suicide] undergirds the ’To be or not to be’ speech . . . . But the question of suicide shadows other elements in the play, including Ophelia’s fate.” Mallin cites, as evidence of Hamlet’s suicidal thoughts 2571-2, 2132-4, and 2743 + 46-7.
Luckily for him {and unluckily for those he kills along the way] he eventually gets a chance [to engineer his own suicide] without the stigma of suicide attached. [See Mallin CN 3638] </p. 60> <p. 61> Hamlet “has been so convinced by the canon on self-slaughter that he has used his capacious brain to bluff a way around it, and the best way he can find is through God’s own plan: ’if it be not now, yet it will come’ [3670]. Yes, yes, but he can help ’it’ along. And so he does.
" . . . . Hamlet replicates one of the more ignoble causes of religious fervor: to justify almost any self-serving deed. He cannot see, and thus effectively shields, his own implication in the ruin of an entire kingdom which falls by reason of his de facto suicide, his agreeing to the rigged swordfight with Laertes. Hamlet knows he is swiftly headed towards death. That suits him fine, as it always has." </p. 61>