1733-6 Massinger (The Maid of Honour, 1632, sig, E3, apud Ingleby et al. 1932, 1: 359): As noted by elze 1882, p. 256, Massinger appears to allude to Hamlet’s soliloquy:

Would they [our heart-strings] would breake

Breake altogether, how willingly like Cato

Could I teare out my bowells, rather then

Looke on the conquerors insulting face,

But that religion, and the horrid dreame

To be suffer’d in the other world denyes it.

Ed. note: Massinger’s reference to Cato perhaps recalls Horatio’s brief determination to fulfill his destiny as an antique Roman (1826).

1732-3 something after death . . . vndiscouer’d country] Anon. (On the Execution of Archbishop Laud, 1644, apud Ingleby et al. 1932, 1: 488): “Although he came with confidence to the scaffold, and the blood wrought lively in his cheeks, yet when he did lye down upon the block he trembled every joint of him; the sense of something after death, and the undiscovered country unto which his soul was wandering, startling his resolution, and possessing every joint of him with an universal palsey of fear.”

1733 vndiscouer’d country] Theobald (1756, pp. 83-6): <p. 83>“The Criticks have, without the least Scruple, accused the Poet of Forgetfulness and Self-Contradiction from this Passage; seeing that in this very Play he introduces a Character from the other World, the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father. I would not be so hardy to assert peremptorily, that Shakespeare was aware of this seeming Absurdity, and despised it; any more than I would pretend to justify him against this Charge to all his Objectors. If he foresaw any thing of it, perhaps, he shelter’d himself from their Criticisms under some Reserve like this. ‘Tis certain, to introduce a Ghost, a Being from the other World, and to say that no Traveller returns from those Confines, is, literally taken, as absolute a Contradiction as can be supposed, & facto & terminis. But we are to take Notice, that Shakespeare brings his Ghost only from a middle State, or local Purgatory; a Prison-house, as he makes his Spirit call it, where he was doom’d, for a Term only, to expiate his Sins of Nature. By the undiscovered Country, here mentioned, he may, perhaps, mean that last and eternal Residence of Souls in a State of full Bliss or Misery: which Spirits in a Middle State (either under Purgation, or in the Prisons of Hope, as, I think, one of the Apostles calls them;) could not be acquainted with, or explain. </p. 83><p. 84> So that, if any Latitude of Sense may be allow’d to the Poet’s Words, tho’ he admits the Possibility of a Spirit returning from the Dead, he yet holds that the State of the Dead cannot be communicated, and, with that Allowance, it remains still an undiscover’d Country. We are to observe too, that even his Ghost who comes, as I hinted above, from Purgatory, (or, whatever else has been understood under that Denomination;) comes under Restrictions: And tho’ he confesses himself subject to a Vicissitude of Torments, yet he says at the same time, that he is forbid to tell the Secrets of his Prison-house. If these Qualifications will not intitle the Poet to say, that no Traveller returns form the Verge of the other World, i. e. to disclose any of its Mysteries, without a Contradiction to the Liberty he has taken of bringing Apparitions upon the Stage; it is all the Salvo I can put in for him, and I must give him up to the Mercy of the Cavillers. The Antients had the same Notions of our abstruse and twilight Knowledge of an After-Being. Valerius Flaccus, I remember, (if I may be indulged in a short Digression,) speaking of the lower Regions, and State of the Spirits there, has an Expression which, in one Sense, comes close to our Author’s undiscovered Country; viz. —Superis incognita Tellus. And it is observable that Virgil, before he enters upon a description of Hell, and of the Elysian Fields, implores the Permission of the Infernal Deities, and Professes, even then, to discover no more than Hear-Say concerning their Mysterious Dominions. Virg. Æneid. VI.‘Dii, quibus imperium est Animarum, Umbræque silentes,Et Chaos, & Phlegethon, loca nocte tacentia late, Sit mihi fas audita logui, fit numine vestro Pandere res alta terra et caligine mersas.’

“The Note of Donatus upon this Passage is very remarkable to our Poet’s Subject: But That the Curious may refer to at their Leisure. I shall conclude all I have to remark on this fine Soliloquy, when I have subjoin’d an Explication to one Word; in which, perhaps, </p. 84><p. 85>I may take the Poet in a Meaning different from what the Generality of his Readers understand him. But if my Singularity in this Point be justify’d by a Reason, I hope it will secure me from the Censure of being idly singular. He is saying, That were it not for the Dread of an unknown State after this, who would bear the Plagues and Calamities here, when he could himself put an End to them, and his own Life too? His Words are these; For who would bear the Whips, and Scorns of Time,When as himself might his Quietus makeWith a bare BODKIN?

“I know that the Poet is generally interpreted to mean in this Place, When we might give ourselves a Release by any, the least, Weapon of Offence that can be. ‘Tis true, This exaggerates the Thought in that particular; but I can scarce suppose that he intended to descend to a Thought, that a Man might dispatch himself with a Bodkin, or a little Implement with which Women separate, and twist over their Hair. I rather believe, the Poet designed the Word here to signify, according to the old Usage of it, a Dagger. Tho’ the Glossaries give us no such Interpretation, the use of an Old and Learned Poet, who may weigh against their Comments, I am sure will support me in it. Chaucer, in his Monke’s Tale, recounting the Murther of Julius Cæsar, has this Stanza.This Julius unto the Capitol went, Upon a day, as he was wont to gone, And in the Capitol anon him hent This false Brutus, and his other fone, And sticked him with BODKINS anone With many a Wound, and thus they let him lie: But never grutch’d he at no stroke but One, Or else at two, but if his story lie. </p. 85></p. 86>‘Tis plain, that the Poet here means Daggers by this Word: And no one ever yet thought that Brutus and Cassius, or any other of the Conspirators, stabb’d Cæsar with their Ladies Bodkins.”</p. 86>

1733 borne] mF3BL (1743, f.8): “Born, a bound, border, limit. Cotgrave.”

1733 anon. (1752, pp. 28-9): “If the curious Reader will take the Trouble to compare this with Virgil’s Description of the Tortures of the damn’d, he will find the Avonian not at all inferior to the Mantuan Bard. — The witty Earl of Roscommon seems to have adopted the Sentiments of our Poet in his Poem entitled, the Prospect of Death. “Meerly to die, no Man of Reason fears: /For certainly we must /As we are born, return to Dust: / Death’s the last Point of many ling’ring Years,/ But whither then we go,/ Whither, we fain would know,/ But human Understanding cannot show:/ </p. 28> <p. 29> This makes us tremble and creates Strange Apprehensions in the Mind, / Fills it with festless Doubts and wild Debates, / Concerning what we living cannot find. / None know what Death is, but the dead: / Therefore we all, by Nature, dying dread, / As a strange, doubtful Way, we know not how to tread.”

1733 from whose borne] Warner (1766-70): “Bourn or Borne, i.e. a Limit or Boundary. Fr. Borne. Sr. I.H. So Tempest. 23. Ant. & Cleop. 4.”

1733-4 Anon. (signed “Nibbler”) (St. James’s Chr. no. 1125 [4-7 May 1768]: 4): “To the Printer of The S. J. CHRONICLE. SIR, The other Day as I was looking over the Tragedy of Hamlet, I thought I perceived an Imperfection (or a Forgetfulness) in the Author, and as I shall point out the Parts which seem not to agree with each other, I beg the Favour of some of your Correspondents to give me, through your Means, their Thoughts of what, at present, seems to me a Contradiction.-- -- In Act the First, Scene the Seventh, when the Ghost enters, Hamlet among other Things says—“[(628-9)] &c.” And in the same Scene holds a Conversation with his Father’s Spirit; the concluding Words of which come from the latter thus; [(776)]. Now I think it is very evident, that Hamlet forgets him in his Soliloquy, Act the Third, Scene the second, when he says [(1730-6)]. The Reader will easily perceive the Words [(1733-4)] in this Speech do not agree with what happened in the first Act, where Hamlet saw and talked with a Ghost. As I am an Admirer of Shakespeare, this cleared up will oblige. May 13, 1768 NIBBLER”

1733-4 Anon. ( signed “fire and Brimstone”) (St. James’s Chr. no. 1127 [19-21 May1768]: 4): “To the Printer of the S. J. CHRONICLE. SIR, Your Correspondent Nibbler, is one of those inattentive Readers, who raise Difficulties as some Folk raise Bumps on their Foreheads, heavily against the Table, for Want of keeping awake.—Hamlet had a better Memory than Nibbler is aware of. The Ghost speaks of Purgatory, where he says he is confined, till his Sins – [(698)---(1733)] &c. &c. &c. must mean the next Remove of departed Souls, which the Ghost had not then reached. It were tedious to explain further because needless. I am, Sir, your’s &c. Fire and Brimstone.”

1733-4 Anon. (signed “Fire Plug”)(St. James’s Chr. no. 1132 [31 May - 2 Jun. 1768]: 4): “To the Printer The S. J. CHRONICLE. SIR, When a modest Question is asked, it is only genteel to give a civil Answer; but your Correspondent Fire and Brimstone could not, I suppose, refrain the infernal Fury of his Nature; or Nibbler would, undoubtedly, have met with a very different Treatment from him. He has been very unlucky, however, as well as ill-natured, in knocking Nibbler’s head against the Table; because, at the same Time he has committed a Blunder for which he deserves to have his own jolted against the Wall. The Ghost (says this sulphurous Critick) speaks of Purgatory where he is confined “[(698)]”—And “that the undiscover’d Country, &c. &c. &c.” must mean the next Remove of departed souls, which the Ghost had not then reached.’—Now I will beg Leave to ask this Picked-Pointed-Match, to what Place he apprehends a Soul, after having passed through Purgatory, is removed? If he does not know, I will tell him, that Purgatory, being, according to the Church of Rome, a Place where departed Souls are sentenced to expiate certain Crimes, not meriting eternal Damnation, the next remove from thence, must be to Heaven; which, surely, cannot be “[(1732-3)] &c.”which Hamlet mentions. The Truth is, Hell must be the undiscover’d Country alluded to; because, departed Souls, whose Crimes have merited eternal Punishment, are never permitted to return from that horrid Region of Torment. I am, Sir, Your’s &c. FIRE PLUG.”

1733-4 Anon. (signed “O”) (St. James’s Chr. no. 1131 [28-30 May 1768]: 4): “To the Printer of the S. J. CHRONICLE. SIR, To clear up what appears to your Correspondent “Nibbler” “an Imperfection, or a Forgetfulness” in Shakespeare, it may, perhaps, be sufficient to observe, that though Hamlet, in the first Act “saw and talked with a Ghost,” which, from it’s questionable Shape, and the “Conversation it held” with him, he at that Time concluded to be the Ghost of his Father ; yet, when his Astonishment had subsided, and Reason again exerted her Influence, he was far from being certain that it was really such. On the contrary, we find him quitting the Stage, at the End of the second Act, rather inclined to believe it an Illusion of the Devil : [1638-1643] Hamlet therefore, whilst wavering in this Uncertainty, might, without the least Shadow of “Contradiction,” in his Soliloquy, term the [1732-4]; since though he had, indeed, a little before had the Evidence of his Senses, that the disembodied Spirit could return, he did not yet, it is clear, entirely credit it..[1643-5]. This he fixes upon as the Test, by which his Opinion of the Apparition was to be determined. But this Determination does not take Place till Act III. Scene 7. Some Time after he had spoken his Soliloquy ; when, remarking the extraordinary Emotion of the King his Uncle at the Representation of the Play, he pronounces. [2158-9-9] This may serve to reconcile the Passages in Act I. Scene 7, and Act III. Scene 2, and to acquit Shakespeare of “Forgetfullness” or “Contradiction.” It may, probably, be unnecessary to add, that the Poet seems to have taken the Idea of representing a future State under the Image of an undiscover’d Country from whence no Traveler returns, the violent Rage, so universally prevalent in his Time, of undertaking dangerous Voyages, in order to attempt new Discoveries; a Circumstance, which, in my Opinion, renders this Passage in the Soliloquy as beautiful as it is proper. I am Sir, your’s &c. O—in Essex, May 24. J.K.”

1733-4 Anon. (signed “Pluto’s Link-Boy”) (St. James’s Chr. no. 1149 [9-12 Jul. 1768]: 4): “To the Printer of the St. J. Chronicler. Sir, One would think from the Craft of some Folks’ Arguments, that close Reasoning like good Penmanship, was unfashionable, and below a Gentleman. After two or three Mediums have been offered upon any Point, if you were not at the Beginning of the Argument, you could not possibly guess what the Question was. Fire-plug is a Master-piece of this kind, as his Letters will convince any one who has superfluous Time to throw away on reading them. To recapitulate a little—Nibbler thought Hamlet must have had a short Memory to say that “No Traveller return’d from that undiscovr’d Country,” to which we are destin’d after Death; whereas he had been conversing with his Father’s Ghost.

“Fire and Brimstone (in Answer) conceived, that by after Death must be meant that eternal State of the Soul when removed to the World of Spirits and consequently that there was no Forgetfulness implied in Hamlet’s calling such a state [(1733)]. For it was evident the Ghost returned from Purgatory by its own account.

“Fire-plug comes with that Confidence which Ignorance is so happy in, and thinks to overset all that Fire and Brimstone had said, by observing, that from the Doctrine of Purgatory, the Souls sent for Purgation to that Place were afterwards to be removed to Heaven, therefore Hamlet could not have meant the next Remove of departed Souls from Purgatory by the undiscover’d Country, &c. for that was to be Heaven, and Hamlet speaks of the “Dread of something after Death.” One would think from this Conclusion, that Point deviated was the Nature of Purgatory, and the future State of Hamlet’s Father—For, says he, the next Remove is to Heaven, and that is no Object of Dread; this clearly places the Person in Dispute in Purgatory. Would not you, Mr. Baldwin, imagine, that in the Lines quoted from the Soliloquy we are speaking of, Hamlet was considering the State of the Father’s Spirit only, and not reflecting on the involuntary Fears arising within Men when they think of an Hereafter. Though a thousand Ghosts come from Purgatory, and tell men they are there for the present, purging away their Sins, in their Way to Heaven what is that to me, who am uncertain myself what will be my Lot, whether Purgatory and Heaven, or no Purgatory and Hell. Whenever I point my View to a future State, as Hamlet did in the Speech-in Question, sure my Ignorance of the Sum Total of my Sins, and what Sins are for Purgatory, and what not, is sufficient Ground for dreading something after Death. It is not the Progress of the Ghost of his Father that he is conjecturing about; the Jet of the Matter in Dispute is this:

“If there be a State for departed Souls beyond Purgatory, from which no Spirit returns, is it any Forgetfulness in Hamlet to call such a State,[(1733)] when he had seen no other Spirit but that of his Father, which came only from Purgatory? Or while we believe in such a Place as Hell, is that not Ground enough for a Person conjecturing about a hereafter, and not speaking of a particular Soul in Purgatory, to speak of the Dread of something after Death? Let the famous Soliloquy of Hamlet be thus considered, and I fancy no Inconsistency will be seen in it. It were wrong to be rough and harsh to so gentle a Creature as Fire-plug seems to be therefore I will not frighten him with my with my real Name, but subscribe myself by the Name of my Office, which is June 21. Pluto’s Link-boy. The Passage in Dispute is often objected to, which is the Reason of my giving you further Trouble on the Subject; for it were Pity any ignorant Reader should raise a Blot on a Page of Shakespeare, and no one take the Trouble to rub it out—be that My Apology.”

1733 Anon.. (signed “Lucifer Gridiron”)(St. James’s Chr. no. 1136 [9-11 Jun. 1768]: 4): “To the Printer of the S.J. CHRONICLE. SIR, I Fear there is a terrible bump on poor Fire-Plug’s Forehead, for he must have nodded very heavily when he wrote his Observation on Hamlet’s Speech to you – a Drop or too of Ink is the best Cure in these Cases—I shall bestow so much on him—I could spare him a Spoonful; but his head is not worth it—Mark his reasoning—

“Purgatory is to purge away Sins of a certain Magnitude; they who are guilty of no other than this Class of Crimes go to Heaven after such Purgation; they who have committed more atrocious Crimes are defined to Hell. Therefore, the next Remove of departed Souls must be Hell, and not Heaven; in the Sense of Hamlet’s Words, for he talks of the Dread of something after death.” Let the Sense of any Cinder-Wench judge, whether, by Fire-Plug’s own Notion of a Hereafter, Hamlet might not well dread something after Death, reckoning that Period to commence after Purgatory for Fire-Plug admits of a Hell a certain Degree of Sinfulness; and I Fancy he will grant, that Man is by a very indifferent Judge of the

“Sum Total of his Sins.—This to me appears sufficient Grounds for Dread in any one who is not Fire-Plug, as my Friend Fire-Plug seems to be. Your’s &c. June 7. LUCIFER GRIDIRON”

1648-1742 An... action.] Gentleman (1770, pp. 22-23): <p. 22>“In the first scene of the third act, we find the King eager to get at the cause of his Nephew’s supposed frenzy; the Play being mentioned, and an invitation for the court to see it, his Majesty from political reasons agrees; and Ophelia is left o try what explanation she can bring her lover to— the celebrated soliloquy— to be, or not to be— is here introduced, and exhibits a beautiful chain of moral reasoning; the objection thrown in against suicide, [quotes 1732] is concise, persuasive, and highly consonant with the true principles of moral philosophy; Critics have with justice pointed out the inconsistence of that parenthesis which stiles the future world [quotes 1733]</p. 22><p. 23>Notwithstanding the master-spring of this very play is such a traveller; therefore a palpable, flat contradiction to the above assertion; the author no doubt meant a corporeal traveller, but it is stretching indulgence very far to admit such a latitude of expression.” </p. 23>

1733 borne] Jennens (ed. 1773): “P. spells this bourne; so do all after him, but H, who says, bourn signifies a brook or stream of water; but what Shakespeare means is borne, a French word, signifying limit or boundary.”

1733 vndiscouer’d country] Ritson (1783, pp. 200-201): “It may still be a question how far dr. Farmers note removes the force or ground of lord Orrerys objection. A very simple person once observed, that it is rather extraordinary for Hamlet to say that no Traveler had ever returned </p. 200><p. 201> from this undiscovered country, when he has, a few moments before, had a long conversation with the spirit of his father, which had returned from it, for the sole purpose of speaking to him.”

1733-1734 The...returns] Henley(1787, p. 86): <p. 86> “Mr. Steevens’s charge of inconsistency in Shakspere, is in the present instance unfounded. ‘From whose bourn No traveller returns’ May be understood to mean, not from the hithermost, but the remotest, confines of which country. This expectation suits best, at least, with the idea of a traveller on a journey of discovery. But taking it otherwise, the apparition of a ghost can with no propriety be styled the return of a traveller; especially, of this ghost, who is so far from making any discovery of this unknown country, that he was even interdicted from mentioning the lightest word of the secrets of his prison-house in it.” </p. 86>

1733 bourn] Rann (ed. 1791-): “—borne—boundary.”

1733 vndiscouer’d country] Steevens (ms. notes, ed. 1793): “Again, in Cymbleine, says the Gaoler to Thumus: ‘how you shall speed in your journey’s end [after execution] I think, you’ll never return to tell one.’”

1733-4 borne... returnes] Becket (1815, pp. 45-46): <p. 45> “The officiousness of the commentators, in many instances, awakens something like indignation in one’s breast. Here is a passage which Mr. Malone does not understand; and in consequence of this, and without questioning his own fallibility, he sets about making an awkward apology for the mistake of the Poet.

What ocular demonstration had Hamlet, that the traveller to the undiscover’d country (as Shakspeare chooses, though not very correctly to express it) does at any time return? The critic we are to suppose would allude to the ghost? But I will venture to assert that the author would never consider an apparition, a supernatural agent; that, in short, which has no reality, as a traveller who was returned from a distant place. Had this indeed been the case, had such been really his notion, he would not have written the lines in question, or in doing so he would have fallen into a gross and extravagant error— an error by the </p. 45> <p. 46> way which the Annotator (as I have already hinted) has assumed for him while in his kindness he has honored him at once with reproof and excuse. But Shakspeare was not a pseudo-philosopher, and his knowledge of nature, as it was intuitive, so was his reasoning on her operations at all times just and superlatively grand. When, therefore, he uses the expression, ‘no traveller returns,’ it is with reference to bodily substance: he speaks of that traveller as of one, who, if returning, must again assume not only an earthly shape, but materiality, a formal existence: in a word, that he should appear as before, and as a living man. Thus we perceive that the charge of inadvertency, so hastily and confidently brought against this distinguished writer, is wholly unfounded; illusory as the shadow of the Danish king.— And yet this very charge has been tamely admitted: it has been looked on with a believing eye; but the dawn of reason will oblige it to fade. ‘Bourn’ must be changed to Borne, i.e. a Bourn is a river.” </p. 46>

1733 vndiscouer’d country] COLERIDGE (ms. notes in Theobald, ed. 1773, p. 165): [Commenting on Theobald’s note] “O miserable Defender! If it be necessary to remove the apparent contradiction; if it be not rather a great Beauty; surely, it were easy to say, That no Traveller returns home, as to his Home or abiding-place.”

1733-4 The . . . returnes] Coleridge (ms. notes 1813 in THEOBALD, ed. 1773; rpt. Coleridge, 1998, 12.4:743): <p. 743>“O miserable defender! If it be necessary to remove the apparent Contradiction; if it be not rather a great Beauty; surely it were easy to say, that no Traveller returns home, as to his Home, or abiding-place.”</p. 743>

1733 Singer (ed.1826): “Mr. Douce points out the following passage in Cranmer’s Bible, which may have been in Shakspeare’s mind:-- ‘Afore I goe thither, from whence I shall not turne againe, even to the lande of darknesse, and shadow of death ; yea into that darke cloudie lande and deadly shadow whereas is no order, but terrible feare as in the darkenesse’-- Job, c.x. ‘The way that I must goe is at hande, but whence I shall not return againe.’-- Ib. c. xvi. ‘-------Weep not for Mortimer,| That scorns the world, and as a traveller| Goes to discover countries yet unknown.’ Marlowe’s King Edward II.”

1733 Douce (1839, pp. 461-2): “The resemblance of this passage to the line cited by Mr. Steevens from Catullus is very remarkable, yet no translation of that author into English is known to have been made. It is true, they might have occurred to our poet in his native language through the medium of some quotation; yet it is equally possible that both the writers have casually adopted the same sentiment. This is a circumstance that more frequently happens than they are aware of who hunt after imitations </p. 461><p. 462> even in writers of the most original genius. Many of Shakespeare’s commentators might seem to be implicated in this charge, if it were not that they have rather designed to mark coincidence than imitation. On the present occasion our author alludes to a country altogether unknown to mortals. That of the Pagan poet is happily illustrated by Seneca, who cites the lines from Catullus, when he causes Mercury to drag the emperor Claudius into the infernal regions. "Nee mora, Cyllenius illum collo obtorto trahit ad inferos."--Lud. de morte Claudii.

“Dekker, in his Seven deadlie sinns of London, 1606, 4to, apostrophizing that city, exclaims, "Art thou now not cruell against thyselfe, in not providing (before the land-waters of affliction come downe againe upon thee) more and more convenient cabins to lay those in, that are to goe into such farre countries, who never looke to come back againe? If thou should’st deny it, the graves when they open, will be witnesses against thee."

“In the History of Valentine and Orson, p. 63, edit. 1694, to, is this passage: "I shall send some of you here present into such a country, that you shall scarcely ever return again to bring tydings of your valour." As Watson, the translator of this romance, translated also The Ship of fools into prose, which was printed by Wynkyn de Worde, it is probable that there was an edition of Valentine and Orson in Shakespeare’s time, though none such is supposed now to remain. Perhaps the oldest we know of is that of 1649, printed by Robert Ibbitson. In 1586, The old book of Valentine and Orson was licensed to T. Purfoot.”

1733 vndiscouer’d country] Collier (ms. notes in COLLIER ed. 1843): “ ‘Weep not for Mortimer, That scorns the world, and, as a traveller, goes to discover countries yet unknown’ Marlowes Edw II (Dyce [ed.] II.288).”

From whose bourn no traveller returns] Halliwell (ed. 1865): “That is, returns to earth as a mortal; for as to the act of returning, Hamlet has had ocular demonstration of that. Douce quotes the following passages from Cranmer’s Bible,--Quotation.

1733 vndiscouer’d country] Keightly (1867, p. 292): “‘In the undiscover’d country...’ If any one refuses his assent to this very slight addition to the text, and which for the first time gives it sense, I must leave him to his own devices.”

1733 borne] Romdahl (1869, p. 31): “Bourn (Fr. borne) = bound, boundary, must be considered as rather obsolete.”

1733 borne] Clark & Wright (ed. 1872): “boundary, limit. See Winter’s Tale, i. 2. 134: ’No bourn ’twixt his and mine.’ "

1733 vndiscouer’d country] Neil (ed. 1877): Ælian (iii, 18), says that in the country of the Meropes ‘there was a place called Anestum, which word signifieth a place whence there is no returne.’ See C. M. Ingleby’s Still Lion, p. 91.”

1733 borne ] Neil (ed. 1877): “See Job, x, 21. Bourn — from French borne, a boundary, a limit — does not mean the head of a fountain, or a small streamlet, as in modern usage it does.”

1733 Hudson (ed.1881): “Bourn is boundary . So in Troilus and Cressida, [2.3.248-50. (1456-8)]: ‘I will not praise thy wisdom, which, like a bourn, a pale, a shore, confines thy spacious and dilated parts.’ ---Of course Hamlet means that, as Coleridge says, ‘no traveller returns to this world as his home or abiding--place.’”

1732 MacDonald (ed. 1885): “—a dread caused by conscience.”

1733-4 The . . . returnes] Craig (1934, p. 22): “Both Cardan Comforte [or de Consolationes?] (D3v) and Hamlet express the idea of death and a dream of a traveler who does not return: Cardan: ’he trauayleth in countries vnknowen whythout hope of retourne’; this dream presages death.” Ed. note: But that’s not quite Hamlet’s idea; in the soliloquy, the undiscovered country is death.