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.

1824 Farren

Farren

1641 Farren (1824, p. 376): “It cannot escape observation, that whenever Hamlet is alone, and relieved from the presence of those, whom it is his purpose to deceive, the true state of his mind developes itself in melancholy soliloquies. Even before the appearance of the Ghost, when harbouring no suspicion as to the cause of his father’s death, Hamlet debated on suicide. When reproaching himself for not executing hir purpose, he feels and confesses his own “weakness and melancholy,” and that the devil is very potent “with such spirits.”

1843- mLewes

mLewes: Chaucer

1641 Lewes (ms. notes in Knight, ed. 1843): “‘Out of his weakness + his melancholy.’ Chaucer.”

1885 macd

macd

1641 MacDonald (ed. 1885): “—caused from the first by his mother’s behaviour, not constitutional.”

1982 ard2

ard2

1641 Out of my . . . melancholy] Jenkins (ed. 1982): “’They say spirits appears To melancholy minds’ (Fletcher, The Night Walker, III. ii. 5-6). Cf. Taillepied, ch. 3, ’Ceux qui sont melancholiques . . . s’impriment en la fantaisie plusieurs choses merveilleuses et terribles’; The Terrors of the Night (Nashe, i. 354), ’From the fuming melancholy of our spleen mounteth that hot matter into the higher region of the brain, whereof many fearful visions are framed’. So the devil, in assuming a false shape, may be exploiting Hamlet’s own ’weakness’. As Nashe says, ’The Devil when with other any other sickness or malady the faculties of our reason are enfeebled and distempered, will be most busy to disturb and torment us’ (i. 348). See Babb, The Elizabethan Malady, pp. 108-9, 49-53; Prosser, p. 110. Accordingly it is not necessary to connect this passage with Belleforest; but see Intro., p.95

“Melancholy of course was not merely a depression of spirits but a well-recognized disease supposedly arising from an abnormal preponderance of the one of the four bodily humours after which it is named. The word, however, like the complaint, was fashionable and had a wide range of meaning, from a transitory mood of dejection to a chronic condition indistinguishable from madness (see Burton, Anat. of Melancholy, I. i. 1 (iv)). In the latter stricter sense Burton takes it commonly to denote ’a kind of dotage without a fever, having for his ordinary companions fear and sadness, without any apparent occasion’ (I. i. 3 (i)). Burton’s book is only the most famous in the vast Renaissance literature on the subject. For Bright’s Treatise of Melancholy, 1971, ch. 4), the formulistic approach unduly restricts the characterization. It is perhaps as well to observe that though the word (in its full range of meanings) is a common one in Shakespeare, this is the only instance of its use by Hamlet to describe his own condition. It is used by the King at III. i. 167."

1999 Dessen & Thomson

1641 melancholy] Dessen & Thomson (1999) cite only fourteen SDs calling for melancholy and these “provide no indication of how the actor is to achieve the effect . . . . ”