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.

1885 macd

macd

695 MacDonald (ed. 1885): “To walk the night, and see how things go, without being able to put a finger to them, is part of his cleansing.”

1903- Anon.

Anon.

695 Anon. (ms. notes in Gollancz, ed. 1903): "Proserpina--w.of a." [She was the wife of Pluto.]

1913 Trench

Trench

695-706 Trench (1913, p. 268), finding justification for the psychological ’fact’ of Hamlet’s effect on the ghost’s manifestations, says that what the ghost says here is conditioned by thoughts Hamlet has in 2356-60 and 456-7.

1982 ard2

ard2: Plato; Virgil; More; Ficino; Battenhouse; West

695-8 Doomd . . . away] Jenkins (ed. 1982): “The idea of a purgatorial expiation of sins is ancient. Plato’s Phaedo describes how impure souls dwell in an infernal lake until purged of their evil deeds; and in Virgil souls suffer for their former ill-doing until their guilt is burnt away by fire ( exuritur igni, Aeneid 6: 742). With so common an idea we need not look for a particular source, but the phrasing fast in fires and burnt and purg’d away closely parallels that of More’s Supplication of Souls, which says of souls that are un cleansed that ’in purgatory. . . the fire . . . shall. . . hold and keep them fast and burn them with incessant pain: till the filthiness of their sin be clean purged and gone’ (Works, 1557, p. 321). Ficino explained that at the death of the body, while pure souls ascended immediately to the eternal regions, impure souls, until they had undergone purgation, stayed close to earth and, assuming forms of air, were visible to men. The Catholic doctrine of purgatory gained support from accounts of ghosts which claimed to come from there. But Protestants, who held that the dead went straight to heaven or hell, whence they did not return, saw in these only evidence of the deceits of diabolic spirits. This passage is relied on along with 762 by those who contend that Shakespeare gives us a ’Catholic’ ghost. Against them Battenhouse, emphasizing the Ghost’s unChristian demand for revenge, argues that it is ’a spirit from pagan hell’ (Studies in Philology, 48: 163). ’But perhaps even to raise this question. . . is to go. . . beyond what the play calls for. . We simply do not need to know the ghost’s denomination, and to insist upon it is gratuitous’ (R. H. West, PMLA, 70: 1117). Cf. 456 CN. There is of course no suggestion that action on Hamlet’s part can ease the Ghost’s torment, or that this is what causes it to communicate. Purgation, unlike revenge, is not concerned with this world. Cf. 698. But contrast The Spanish Tragedy and its like.”

1987 oxf4

oxf4: Schmidt

695 walke the night] Hibbard (ed. 1987): "walk throughout the night. Compare [Lr 4.6.13 (2448)], ‘the crows and choughs that wing the midway air’, another example of what Schmidt, with specific reference to these and other passages, calls ‘the accusative of space.’ "

2006 ard3q2

ard3q2: standard

695 walke the night] Thompson & Taylor (ed. 2006): “walk throughout the night”

2007 Wilson

Wilson

695-6 Wilson (2007, p. 232) points out that critics absolve the ghost of any serious moral failings. But its suffering “is disturbingly like that of the Elizabethan martyrs . . . . This Ghost is made guilty by its unrelenting cries for vengeance: and if the logic of its Catholic origin is followed, what Hamlet thereby registers is Shakespeare’s own resistance, in the red dawn of a new age, to apocalyptic calls for revenge.” [It may be Hamlet’s resistance rather than Shakespeare’s; and the ghost’s cries for vengeance are not much repeated.]

2007 Mark Rankin

Rankin: 2 Macc

695-8 Doomd . . . purg’d away] Rankin (private communication): The apocryphal 2 Maccabees (c.40 B.C.E.) 12:39-45 appears to be the earliest known Judio-Christian mention of mitigation of sin after death.