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.

1765- Davies

Davies

1737 Davies (1765-): “Conscience in this place means reflection exciting fear and doubt—”

1826 sing1

sing1

1737 Singer (ed.1826): “‘I’ll not meddle with it, ----it makes a man a coward.’---King Richard III [1.4.135 (968)]. And again:-- ‘O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me.’ Ib [5.3.179 (3641)].”

1843 col1

col1

1737 Collier (ed. 1843): “The words ‘of us all,’ which most likelly had dropped out at the end of the line in the quarto, 1604, (they are in the quarto, 1603,) are from the folio, 1623.”

1856b sing2

sing2=sing1

1872 cln1

cln1

1737 Clark & Wright (ed. 1872): "Compare Richard III, i. 4. 137 sqq."

1885 macd

macd

1737 MacDonald (ed. 1885): “It is not the fear of evil that makes us cowards, but the fear of deserved evil. The Poet may intend that conscience alone is the cause of fear in man. ‘Coward’ does not here involve contempt: it should be spoken with a grim smile. But Hamlet would hardly call turning from suicide cowardice in any sense.24”

1934a cam3

1737 Wilson (ed. 1934): “conscience = reflection, conciousness. Bridges has restored this meaning in The Testament of Beauty. Cf. Bradley.”

1982 ard2

ard2

1737-8 Thus . . . thus] Jenkins (ed. 1982): “Some difficulty has also arisen at l. 84 [1738] from the transition to a new topic which the repeated ’thus’ may disguise. The first thus (83) [1737] introduces, I take it, the conclusion which follows on all the preceding discussion : and with this the reflections prompted by the initial ’question’ come to an end. But at the same time they lead, with the second thus (84), to a further reflection on a kindred matter in which the same trait of human nature may be seen. In fact the frustration of the impulse to seek death now offers itself as a particular example of a general tendency in men for any act of initiative to be frustrated by considerations which it raises in the mind.

"Of the two senses the first is exhibited in R3 I. iv. 134, ’it makes a man a coward’, V. iii. 179, ’coward conscience’, and V. iii. 309; the second in Tim. II. ii. 176-7, ’Canst thou the conscience lack To think I shall lack friends?’ The choice between the two has been much debated. (1) is emphatically repudiated by Bradley (p. 98 n.) against OED. But it is upheld by reference to Elizabethan usage by, among others, Joseph (Conscience and the King, pp. 108-10), Prosser (pp. 167-70 (169-72)), and especially C. Belsey in ’The Case of Hamlet’s Conscience’ (SP, LXXVI, 127-48). This is also the sense in which the word is used by Belleforest in conjunction with the cowardice (poltronnerie) that hinders gallant enterprises (see Intro., p. 95) - in view of which it is less necessary, though still instructive, to note that Cardan’s Comfort (1573, N6) attributes man’s unhappiness to ’a cowardly and corrupt conscience’. The Timon passage relied on for sense (2) reveals itself as exceptional. The R3 parallels, with their thrice-repeated association with cowardice, are strongly in favour of (1), and it is clearly implied in all seven other uses of the word in Hamlet. The antithesis between Hamlet, who here sees conscience as a deterrent, and Laertes, who consigns ’conscience . . . to the profoundest pit’ (IV. v. 132 [2879]) is striking. Moreover, this sense follows naturally from the ’dread’ of the after-life, which an uneasy conscience will increase. C.S. Lewis believes that conscience here means ’nothing more or less than "fear of hell" ’ (Studies in Words, p. 207). What alone is against this sense is that it does not so naturally lead on : the faltering of resolution as a result of ’thought’ (l. 85) cannot easily be attributed to the recognition or fear of wrongdoing but rather to what Hamlet later calls ’thinking too precisely on th’event’ (IV.iv.41). Excess of ‘thought’ comes from awareness of (and attention to) various considerstions, but if that is what conscience now suggests, there is a shift of meaning. In fact there is no necessity to see lines 84-8 as concerned with ‘conscience’ at all. Resolution weakens in the course of thinking just as courage to death weakens through the operation of conscience. The commentators maintain (1) or (2) according as they associate conscience more with what precedes or with what follows. For the Bradleians, who tend to equate ‘conscience’ with ‘thought,’ it is frequently ‘reflection’. D. G. James (The Dream of Learning, p. 42) argues that the word here carries both meanings — ‘both a command to do what is right and anxious reflections as to what is, in fact, the right thing to do’. I believe firmly in (1), which must be the meaning in l. 83, after which the inhibiting of action by the conscience which fears the after-life becomes but one instance examplifying (‘and thus’) the general process described in ll. 83-7. See above, ll. 56-88 [1710] LN."