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Line 790 - Commentary Note (CN)

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.”

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Notes for lines 0-1017 ed. Bernice W. Kliman

For explanation of sigla, such as jen, see the editions bib.

790 O most pernicious woman.

1858 col3

col3

790 Collier (ed. 1858): “ ‘And perfidious,’ clearly required by the line, is only found in the corr. fo. 1632. The two words, ‘pernicious’ and “perfidious,’ looking like each other, perhaps the old printer, having composed the first, fancied he had composed both, and thus omitted a very striking and appropriate epithet.”

Ed. note: "And perfidious" from the Perkins F2, was not included in Collier’s "own" next ed., 1878.

1859 Werder

Werder

790 Werder (1859, trans. 1907, p. 81): “The mother comes first in the vent of his indignation and rage. [quotes 790] . . . That is just, for the greater crime of the murder came as a direct consequence of her weakness.”

1874 Malleson

Malleson: xref

790-1 Malleson (1874, p. 470): “Even before he had learnt from the Ghost the full measure of his mother’s guilt, he had said in his anguish at her marriage within a month—‘a little month’—after his father’s death, ‘Fraity thy name is, woman;’ [322-30], and when the Ghost has left him he first apostrophises her, ‘O most pernicious woman,’ and puts the murdered ‘the smiling damed villain,’ in the second place. His mother has destroyed his faith in every woman . . . .”

1877 v1877

v1877 = col3 (minus 1st sentence)

790

1885 macd

macd

790 MacDonald (ed. 1885): “The Ghost has revealed her adultery: Hamlet suspects her of complicity in the murder [2410].”

1929 trav

trav

790 pernicious] Travers (ed. 1929): “ = not simply fatal, but wickedly so.”

1930 Granville-Barker

Granville-Barker

790-3 Granville-Barker (1930, rpt. 1946, 1: 63): “It is significant that his next thought [after his vow to remember] is not of Claudius’ guilt, but his mother’s [quotes 790]. For there has been his wound, and it is widened now and deepened. And the more fully, filled-in picture of the pair of them, of her and the ’smiling’—the seductively smiling—’damned villain,’ so convulses and shakes him that he tries the seemingly ridiculous remedy of setting down upon the actual tables taken from his pocket [quotes 793]. But the simple steadying of the hand to write the words does steady his hand.”

1987 oxf4

oxf4

790 pernicious] Hibbard (ed. 1987): "wicked (the usual sense in Shakespeare)."