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.

1931 Farjeon

Fargeon: Tearle

788 volume] Farjeon (1931, rpt. 1949, p. 154): cannot understand why the actor Tearle should so emphasize volume in 788, “as though it had something to do with size.”

1987 oxf4

oxf4

788 booke and volume] Hibbard (ed. 1987): "voluminous book (hendiadys). Hamlet, in the manner typical of Shakespeare’s time, thinks of his mind as a memory bank."

1993 Parker

Parker

787-90 thy . . . pernicious woman] Parker (1993, pp. 79-82, quotes by Griffiths 2005, p. 153): “There is an even more striking juxtaposition of ’woman’ and a frail or ’baser matter’ that might be interposed or come between in the commission delivered by Hamlet-father to Hamlet-son: [quotes 787-90]. Beyond the generalized oedipal paradigms of a mother who ’comes between’ a father and son as the object of rivalry (elicited more readily from Hamlet by the shift from brother to nephew [2112] as the murderer in the Mousetrap Scene), the reference here to mixture with a ’baser matter’ summons the specific historical resonance of Aristotelian notions of female ’frailty’ as a ’matter’ or material that comes between father and son in a different sense. In a generative context, this female ’matter’ is the ’woman’s part’ in man [Cym. 2.5.20] that undermines and adulterates the perfect copying or reproduction of parthenogenesis—a lapse in what might otherwise be the replication of Hamlet-father in Hamlet-son. In the influential tradition of woman as imperfect and secondary, a lapsus or falling off from the more perfect male, she is both ’baser matter’ [789] and adulterating mixture, a frail or ’weaker vessel’ whose coming between involves an aberrant and translative detour, a creature whose status is also figured by sexual parts that are secret, ’occult.’ or hidden from the eye. In this historically contemporary model of the female matrix, the matter of woman thus ’comes between’—as lapsus, error, detour, frailty—the generative reproduction of a paternal original in a son who might be a faithful copy or representative, perfect instrument of a father’s will.”

2006 ShSt

Desmet: Carruthers +

787 Desmet (2006, pp. 48-9): <p. 48> “In Hamlet, Polonius expresses the sonnet speaker’s optimism concerning the vitality and permanence of memory’s writing when he advises his son, ’These few Precepts in thy memory See thou </p. 48> <p. 49> character’ [523-4]); but Polonius is not so trusting as to substitute precepts for spies. He knows that the exercise of memory through written characters is tiring, even painful, and often ineffective. As Mary Carruthers comments, ’Writing was always hard physical labor, very hard as well on the surface on which it was being done; this vigorous physical aspect, I believe, was always part of that master model of memory as a written surface. Hamlet demonstrates the concentrated energy of a medieval scribe when he vows to the ghost that he will wipe clean and reconfigure the tables of his memory: [quotes 787-9]. His act of charactery--erasing past sayings and inscribing new words to live by--causes significant trauma; for Hamlet is at once pen and paper, his brain suffering injuries of its own devising. But all this industry and pain neither sharpen Hamlet’s memory, if his famous delays are to be credited, nor help him to translate memory’s marks into an expressive rhetoric of praise and commemoration." </p. 49> ”

2006 ard3q2

ard3q2: xref

788 Thompson & Taylor (ed. 2006): “Hamlet’s mind is now a book —a familiar metaphor, as when Orsino tells Cesario/Viola, ’I have unclasp’d / To thee the book even of my secret soul’ (TN 1.4.13-14) . . . .”

ard3q2

788 volume] Thompson & Taylor (ed. 2006): “in one sense synonymous with book, but also carrying the sense of size or spaciousness”