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1572 Lavaterus

Lavaterus

685-707 Lavaterus (1572, pt. 2, ch. 2, pp. 103, 104; pt. 1, ch. xv, p. 72[apud Drake (1817, 2: 415-16]): <p. 415>“Purgatorie is also under the earth as Hell is. Some say that Hell and Purgatorie are both one place, albeit the paines be divers according to the deserts of soules. Furthermore </p. 415> <p. 416> they say, that under the earth there are more places of punishment in which the soules of the dead may be purged, For they say, that this or that soule hath been seene in this or that mountaine, floud, or valley, where it hath committed the offence: that there are particular Purgatories, assigned unto them for some special cause, before the day of Judgement, after which time all maner of Purgatories, as well general as particular shal cease. Some of them say, that the paine of Purgatorie is al one with the punishment of Hel, and that they differ only in this, that the on hath an end, the other no ende: and that it is far more easie to endure all the paynes of this worlde, which al men since Adam’s time have susteined, even unto the day of the Last Judgement, than to bear one dayes space the least of the two punishments. Further, they holde that our fire, if it be compared with the fire of Purgatorie, doth resemble only a painted fire.

“ . . . by Gods licence and dispensation, certaine, yea before the day of Judgement, are permitted to come out, and that not for ever, but only for a season, for the instructing and terrifying of the lyving. . . . Many times in the nyght season, there have been certaine spirits hearde softely going—who being asked what they were, have made answere that they were soules of this or that man, and that they now endure extreame tormentes, If by chaunce any man did aske of them, by what meanes they might be delivered out of these tortures, they have aunswered, that in case a certaine numbre of Masses were sung for them, or Pilgrimages vowed to some Saintes, or some other such deedes doone for their sake, that then surely they shoulde be delivered.”</p. 416>

I will try to get this from the original. Then I can remove Drake to his own slot, as below.

1801 Todd’s Milton

Todd: Hume

685-7 houre . . . selfe] Hume (apud Todd, 1801, 2:97), referring to P. L. 2.91-2 “and the torturing hour, Calls us to penance,” says: “Milton here supposes the suffering of the damned spirits not to be always alike intense, but that they have some intermissions. Hume.”

Todd adds, “Possibly Milton had in view the intermission which the Ghost in Hamlet describes [and he quotes]. Todd.”

1817 Drake

Drake = Lavaterus * † +

685-707 Drake (1817, 2: 416-18): <p. 416>“Never was the art of the poet more discoverable, than in the use which has been made of this doctrine [i.e. Lavaterus’] in the play before us, and more </p. 416><p. 417> particularly in the following narrative, which instantly seizes on the mind, and fills it with that indefinite kind of terror that leds to the most horrible imaginings:— [quotes 685-707 through blood]

“In this hazardous experiment, of placing before our eyes a spirit from the world of departed souls, no one has approached, by many degrees, the excellence of our poet. The shade of Darius, in the Persians of AEschylus, has been satisfactorily shown, by a critic of great acbility, to be far inferior †; nor can the ghosts of Ossian, who is justly admired for delineations of this kind, be brought into competition with the Danish spectre; neither the Grecian, nor the Celtic mythology, indeed, affording materials equal, in point of impression, to those which existed for the English bard. We may also venture to affirm, that the management of Shakspeare, in the disposition of his materials, from the first shock which the sentinels receive, to that which Hamlet sustains in the closet of his mother, is perfectly unrivalled, and, more than any other. calculated to excite the highest degree of interest, pity, and terror. </p. 417><p. 418>

“It is likewise no small proof of judgment in our poet, that he has only once attempted to unveil, in this direct manner, the awful destiny of the dead, and to embody, as it were, at full length, a missionary from the grave; for the ghost of Banquo, and the spectral appearances in Julius Caesar and Richard the Third, are slight and powerless sketches, when compared with the tremendous visitation in Hamlet, beyond which no human imagination can ever hope to pass. *

<n*> <p. 416> “* ‘Of ghosts and spirites walking by nyght,’ 1572. The seconde parte, chap. ii. p. 103.” </p. 416> </n* >

<n†> <p. 416> “† The seconde parte, chap. ii. p 104; and The first parte, chap. xv. p. 72.” </p.416> </n†>

<n†> <p. 417> “See Montagu on the Preternatural Beings of Shakspeare, in her Essay, p. 160, 165.” </p. 417> <n†>

<n*> <p. 418> “* It has been asserted by Gildon, but upon what foundation does not appear, that Shakspeare wrote the scene of the Ghost in Hamlet, in the church-yard bordering on his house at Stratford.—Vide Reed’s Shakspeare, vol. v. p. 4.”

Ed. note: See Gildon, n. 1- 867

I am not including his note for the Sh passage. He uses Reed, presumably 1813.

1885 macd

macd

685 MacDonald (ed. 1885): “The night is the Ghost’s day.”

1917 MLR

Greg

685-776 Greg (MLR 12 [1917]: 412-13) deplores the Senecan style of the ghost’s speech, which seldom rises to Shn excellence. Claudio’s depiction of the afterlife in MM far exceeds it (3.1.118 ff.). Greg believes that its overblown style is Sh’s hint that we are not to accept it at face value but as an hallucination. It’s as bad as it is because Hamlet’s mind is not normal; he’s already distraught and suspicious.

1982 ard2

ard2:

685 My houre] Jenkins (ed. 1982): “daybreak. Cf. 743, 774 and 146-54.”

1987 oxf4

oxf4

685 Hibbard (ed. 1987): "i.e. dawn approaches."

2006 ard3q2

ard3q2: standard

685 My . . . come] Thompson & Taylor (ed. 2006): “i.e. it is nearly dawn. As in 1.1., the movement from midnight to dawn is rapid.”