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.

1723- mtby2

mtby2 : pope

723 so] Thirlby (1723-): “This word too I suppose Mr Pope was pleased to throw out explenitudine ---tis to help the verse which was well enough before, & perhaps better than it it [sic] is now, as without doubt the sense was.”

1980 pen2

pen2: xref

723-5 the . . . abusde] Spencer (ed. 1980): “Old Hamlet’s anticipation of his account of his own poisoned ear (lines 63-4; see also 3.2.144, stage direction) is almost like one of his son’s characteristic puns. The many allusions in the play to ears (especially damaged ones)—e.g. 1.1.31, 1.2.171, 2.2.475 and 560, 3.2.10, 3.4.65 and 96, and 4.5.91—produce a half-conscious reminder of the circumstances of the murder.”

1982 ard2

ard2: Belleforest; //

723 A Serpent] Jenkins (ed. 1982): “In Belleforest the murder took place at a banquet. The secret poisoning recalls the allegory of the sleeping king and the serpent’s sting in 2H6 3.2.254 ff.”

1990 Cummings

Cummings: Eustachio +

723 eare of Denmarke] Cummings (1990, pp. 80-92) relates Sh.’s fascination with the act of hearing in Hamlet to the discovery of the eustachian tube by Bartolomo Eustachio in 1564, announced in De auditus organus. Cummings lists several other medical sources. His thesis is that Hamlet fails “to hear what another person means or needs...” (p. 87). He refers to several places where Hamlet shows he doesn’t hear, including the nunnery scene, where he does not hear Ophelia’s distress, and the graveyard scene where he mis-hears Laertes who hasn’t said anything about conjuring the stars (87-9).

“ [. . . ] Hamlet’s moral failure seems to me to be very deeply and repetitively woven into the image fabric of the text” (91). The image-clusters of ears and hearing point “to the tragic failure of the Prince to transform what he hears into the heroic action that would both signal his princely obedience to the king, and save both the kingdom and his own life” (91).

1993 SQ

Ayers

723 Serpent] Ayers (1993, p. 429): “The idealization of Hamlet’s father, suggested variously by both Hamlet and Horatio, points to a more general idealization of the past; the Denmark of Old Hamlet becomes by association a prelapsarian second Eden, one which has come to an end in a garden through the agency of another ’serpent,’ whose chosen means of access is (also) the ear.”

2006 ard3q2

ard3q2: xref

723-5 eare . . . abusde] Thompson & Taylor (ed. 2006): “See [744-58] and [41 CN]”