HW HomePrevious CNView CNView TNMView TNINext CN

Line 402 - Commentary Note (CN) More Information

Notes for lines 0-1017 ed. Bernice W. Kliman
For explanation of sigla, such as jen, see the editions bib.
402 The Apparision comes: I knewe your father,1.2.211
-1761 Rochester?
Rochester
402 I knewe your father] Rochester? (-1761, pp. 197-8): < p. 197> “There was a necessity for altering this [i.e. I know your Father], as know was </ p. 197> < p. 198> a false Tense: And knew would not have amended it perfectly. For it appears before, that the Relater Horatio had seen the King but once, and could not be supposed to know him very well.” </ p. 198>
Ed. note: Since know is found in Q9 and Q10 only and since in another instance "Rochester?" did not use Q10, I infer that Q9 (1695) is his early reference text; it was published about 5 years after the earl’s death.
1982 ard2
ard2: Wilson
402 knewe] Jenkins (ed. 1982): “I see no good reason for taking this, with Dover Wilson, to mean ’recognized’ rather than ’was well acquainted with’. As Wilson himself notes, Horatio is careful to not to say that the Ghost was Hamlet’s father, only that it was like him.”
1988 SQ
Goldberg
402-3 Goldberg (1988, p. 313): “ . . . [F]rom the start the Ghost exists within a scriptive order, and not merely that of the Senecan tragedy in which his lines are written. For when Horatio offers to vouch for the Ghost, he tells Hamlet, ’I knew your father. / These hands are not more like.’ The identity of the Ghost is confirmed by the identity of the hand. This is not surprising; the Ghost exists only within similitude, appearing ’in the same figure like the king that’s dead,’ ’Most like,’ ’Mark it, Horatio’ [53, 56, 55]). And Horatio marks it by likening the likeness to the hand that marks.”
53 55 56 402