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.

1790 mal

mal

1540 he’s for a Iigge, or a tale of bawdry] Malone (ed. 1790): “A jig, in our poet’s time signified a ludicrous metrical composition, as well as a dance. Here it is used in the former sense. So, in Florio’s Italian Dictionary, 1598: “Frottola, a countrie jigg, or round, or countrie song, or wanton verses.”

1791- rann

rann

1540 a jigg,] Rann (ed. 1791-): “—some ludicrous piece.”

1819 cald1

cald1

1540 Iigge...bawdry] Caldecott (ed. 1819): “A ludicrous interlude.” Quotes Florio’s Ital. Dict. 1598. “Prol. to Fletcher’s Love’s Pilgrimage. From his use of this word again in Polonius’s presence (III.2:) in answer to Ophelia, who telling his he is merry, he says, ‘O, your only jig maker,’ it seems to be applied here i the sense of a ludicrous composition: and the subsequent scene of the grave-diggers appears to have been an interlude, in some sort, of this description. And Steevens in III. 2. quotes from Shirley’s Changes, 1632. He adds, that in The Hog hath lost his Pearl, 1614, one of the players comes to solicit a gentleman to write a jig for him; and refers to these entries in the book of the Stationers Company: ‘Philips his Jigg of the Slyppers, 1595. Kempe’s Jigg of the Kitchen-Stuff Woman, 1695.’”

1826 sing1

sing1

1540-1 Igge] Singer (ed. 1826): “Giga, in Italian, was a fiddle, or crowd; gigaro, a fiddler, or minstrel. Hence a jig ( first written gigge, though pronounced with g soft after the Italian), was a ballad, or ditty, sung to the fiddle. ‘Frottola, a countrie gigge, or round, or country song or wanton verse.’ As these itinerant minstrels proceeded, they made it a kind of farcical dialogue; and at length it came to signify a short merry interlude:--’Farce, the jigg at the end of an enterlude, wherein some pretie knaverie is acted.’ There are several of the old ballads and dialogues called Jigs in the Harleian Collection. Thus also in The Fatal Contract, by Hemmings:-- ‘---we’ll hear your jigg, How is your ballad tittled.’”

1839 knt1

knt1

1540-1 Knight (ed. 1839): “A jig, a ludicrous interlude.”

1843 col1

col1

1540-1 Collier (ed. 1843): “A jig was the technical name for a comic species of entertainment, usually performed by the clown of the company after the play. See History of Engl. Dram. Poetry, and the Stage, iii. 378.”

1856 hud1 (1851-6)

hud1

1540 Iigge...bawdry] HUDSON (ed. 1856): “Giga, in Italian, was a fiddle, or crowd; gigaro, a fiddler, or minstrel. Hence a jig was a ballad, or ditty, sung to the fiddle. ’Frottola, a countrie gigge, or round, or country song or wanton verse.’ As the itinerant minstrels proceeded they made it a kind of farcical dialogue; and at length it came to signify a short merry interlude; ’Farce, the jigg at the end of an enterlude, wherein some pretie knaverie is acted.’"

1856b sing2

SING2=SING1

1872 hud1

HUD2 = HUD1 minus strikethrough

1540 Iigge...bawdry] HUDSON (ed. 1856): “Giga, in Italian, was a fiddle, or crowd; gigaro, a fiddler, or minstrel. Hence a jig was a ballad, or ditty, sung to the fiddle. ’Frottola, a countrie gigge, or round, or country song or wanton verse.’ As the itinerant minstrels proceeded they made it a kind of farcical dialogue; and at length it came to signify a short merry interlude; ’Farce, the jigg at the end of an enterlude, wherein some pretie knaverie is acted.’"

1890 irv

irv

1540 Iigge] Symons (in Irving & Marshall ed. 1890): ‘Jig was formerly used, not only for a dance, but for ‘a ludicrous metrical composition.’ The word is from the Italian giga, originally meaning a fiddle; the word was thus at first spelt gigge in English. Cotgave has: ‘Farce: f. A (fond and dissolute) Play, Comedie, or Enterlude; also, the Jyg at the end of an Enterlude, wherein some pretie knauerie is acted.’ Florio has: ‘Frottola, a countrie gigge, or round, or countrie song, or wanton verse.’

1899 ard1

ard1

1540 Iigge] Dowden (ed. 1899): “a ludicrous metrical composition, sometimes given on stages by the clown, sometimes, as Cotgrave says, ‘at the end of an Enterlude, wherein somee pretie Knaverie is acted.’”

1934a cam3

cam3

1540-1 Wilson (ed. 1934): “i.e. the only thing in a play he can appreciate is the Clown’s jig (which commonly took place at the end) or some bawdy jest—he sleeps out the rest. Kempe, who left Sh.’s company in 1599, was fanous for his jigs, which were prob. discontinued after his departure. v. G. ‘jig.’”

1980 mueller

Mueller apud L&R

1541 Hecuba] Mueller (apud Lupton & Reinhard, 1993, p.102 n.11): <n. 11> <p. 102>“‘The widowed Hecuba was a living monument to the “instability of human affairs” [[Erasmus]], and it was through her suffering rather than through any action that for the sixteenth century Hecuba became the tragic figure par excellence’ (21).” </p. 102> </n. 11>

1982 ard2

ard2

1541 Hecuba] Jenkins (ed. 1982): " ’Hecuba, the woefullest wretch That ever lived, to make a mirror of’ (Gorboduc, III. i. 14-15). Shakespeare in some famous stanzas in Lucrece had shown her ’staring on Priam’s wounds’, as the emblem of ’all distress and dolour’ (1444 ff.). One of the great heroines of Greek tragedy, she had always been recognized as the extreme type of sorrow (cf. ll. 515-16 LN) ; but her pre-eminence in classical literature owes much to the further afflictions after Priam’s death. The woes of Hecuba do not form part of ’Aeneas’ tale to Dido’ in Virgil nor in the Dido of Marlowe and Nashe. In Caxton and Lydgate (Troy Book, IV. 6422 ff.) at the fall of Troy she flees with Polyxena not knowing where to go. Even in Peele, where the transition from Priam’s death to Hecuba’s ’tears’ seems to anticipate Shakespeare, she is thought of as ’thrice-wretched’ because of what ’did after her betide’ (Tale of Troy, ll. 458-63). In Locrine (III. i. 43-53), which also passes from Priam to Hecuba, she weeps for Troy and for her children ’murdered by wicked Pyrrhus’ bloody sword’. Shakespeare’s unique emphasis upon her grief for Priam is significant of his purpose here."

1993 Lupton & Reinhard

Lupton & Reinhard

1540-59 Lupton & Reinhard (1993, pp. 102-3): <p. 102> “Seneca, following Euripides, recentered tragic drama around female protagonists. The Player’s speech moves from the tragic villainy of Pyrrhus to the grief and rage of Hecuba. The plays of female lamentation by Euripides and Seneca (Hecuba, Phoenician Women, Trojan Women) were paragons of tragedy in the sixteenth century, not because of their dramatic action but rather their rhetorical tableaux of heroic feminine suffering. The Player’s Speech presents the ‘mobled queen’ as a theatrical spectacle: [quotes 1551-2]. The sight of Hecuba divested of family and station, the Player indicates, should call forth in her audience the same invective against Fortune that preceded her representation in the Player’s speech. Hecuba is a counterimage to Fortune: both function as Senecan emblems of the tragic as feminine, the one in her heroic rageful grief, and the other in her allegorization of female violence and sexuality.

“The Senecan shift to the tragedy of the feminine involves not only a narratival recentering around women, but also a more structural alliance of the tragic with the feminine, an alliance allegorized by the (late classical) Fortuna and the emblematic figure of the mother in mourning. In the Player’s speech, Hamlet projects the Senecan as its feminine other, fig- </p. 102><p. 103> in these twinned images of sexual violence and enraged grief. The language of the Player’s speech—archaic, elevated, rhetorical—is marked off from the framing play. Like the apostrophe of Fortune, this differentiation at once invokes a version of the Senecan and resolutely casts out and outdates that image as prior to and outside itself.

“If Hecuba and Fortuna are prominent emblems of Senecan theatricality in Hamlet, they complete rather strongly with the Ghost, inherited from Seneca’s tragedies of paternity, Oedipus and Thyestes, via such plays as The Spanish Tragedy. So, too, in metatheatrical and intertextual terms, Hamlet can only project the Senecan as its feminine other by identifying with the Senecan, and thereby taking it as its ‘inside,’ its internalized ideal; Hamlet’s metatheatrical scenes function as an imbedded theatrical other simultaneously ‘interior’ and ‘exterior” to the play as a whole. . . . [There are] two Senecan legacies: the tragedies of violent or mourning women and those of vengeful, ghostly fathers. . . . Hamlet (mis)represents itself, ge- </p. 103><p. 104> nerically and thematically, as a tragedy more of the father than of the mother.” </p. 104>