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.

1562 Heywood

Heywood

1814 out . . . harsh] Heywood (1562, 2: 5: 68): “out of tune by note,” meaning harsh sounds.

1778 v1778

v1778

1814 time] Steevens (ed. 1778): “Thus the folio. The quarto—out of time.”

1783 ritson

ritson

1814 time] Ritson (1783, p. 201): “Would it not be better to read time, with the quarto?”

1790 mal

mal

1814 time] Malone (ed. 1790): “These two words in the hand-writing of Shakspeare’s age are almost indistinguishable, and hence are frequently confounded in the old copies.”

1791- rann

rann

1814 time] Rann (ed. 1791-): “—time.”

1793 v1793

v1773 = mal +

“See Vol. IV. p. 63, n. 8. “

1813 Gifford (ed. Massinger’s Works, vol. 2, p. 361)

1814 time] Gifford (1813, vol.2, p. 361): [Gloss on “The motions of the spheres are out of time” in The Roman Actor] “For time, Mr. M. Mason chooses to read, tune. In this capricious alteration he is countenanced by some of the commentators on Shakespeare, who, as well as himself, might have spared their pains; since it appears from numberless examples that the two words were once synonymous. Time, however, was the more ancient and common term: nor was it till long after the age of Massinger, that the use of it, in the sence of harmony, was entirely superseded by that of tune.”

-1845 mhun1

mhun1

1814 Like sweet bells iangled] Hunter (-1845, f. 225v): “I believe Sweet-bells were what we now call Chimes. This I conclude from the following passage in Faller ‘Toward making the sweet chime in Bow Church one hundred pounds.’ Worthies—Cheshire—183.”

1845 hunter

hunter

1813-14 Now...harsh] Hunter (1845, p. 244-45): <p. 244>“Perhaps the word jangled may be better understood by others than by myself; but it may not be quite useless to shew what was meant by it by the following quotation from Lines of Joshua Poole, addressed to his Scholars, and prefixed to his English Parnassus, 1657. ‘Though whetstones cannot cut at all, they may Do service, and make knives as sharp as they </p. 244><p. 245>Themselves are blunt; and they who cannot ring, By jangling may toll better ringers in.’”</p. 245>

1856b sing2

sing2=hunter

1874 corson

corson

1814 Corson (1874, p. 25): “Like sweet Bels iangled out of tune, and harsh, F. Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh; C. All the Quartos and Folios agree having a comma after ‘tune’ (Qq. time); the pointing of the C. is Capell’s. The phrase ‘out of tune’ is certainly an adverbial element to ‘jangled’ and an adjective element to ‘sweet bells.’ The two ideas attached to ‘bells’ are 1. ‘jangled out of tune; 2. ‘harsh,’ which expresses to what extent ‘jangled out of tune.’

1885 macd

macd

1814 MacDonald (ed. 1885): “I do not know whether this means—the pearl rung without regard to tune of time—or—the single bell so handled that the tongue checks and jars the vibration. In some country places, I understand, they go about ringing a set of hand-bells.”

1899 ard1

ard1

1814 time] Dowden (ed. 1899): “The Q misprint time occurs in F, Macbeth, IV. Iii. 235.”

1982 ard2

ard2

1814 time] Jenkins (ed. 1982): "Either time or tune must be a minim error, but as both make excellent sense we cannot be certain which. A Q2 misreading may be paralleled in Mac. IV. iii. 235, F ’This time goes manly’, where time, though occasionally defended, is usually emended to tune. Bright compare the mind which has lost control of faculties otherwise unimpaired to a musician with ’a false stringed lute’ (p. 38), and in Shakespeare a musician who ’plays false’ is ’out of tune’ (Gent. IV. ii. 57-8). In Bright, when reason is not in control, the parts of a ’most consonant and pleasant harmony are put ’out of tune’ (p. 250), and Shakespeare uses the same metaphor when Cordelia speaks of Lear’s ’untun’d and jarring senses’ (Lr IV. vii. 16). Discordant sound rather than broken time may be suggested by jangled: Fynes Moryson describes bells at Polish funerals as being ’tolled and jangled, never rung out or answering one the other in musical tunes’ (Shakespeare’s Europe, ed. C. Hughes, 1903, p. 395). And Shakespeare elsewhere combines out of tune with harsh: see Rom. III. v. 27-8, ’It is the lark that sings out of tune, Straining harsh discords’; Oth. V. ii. 118-19, ’murder’s out of tune, And sweet revenge grows harsh’.

“On the other hand, out o’ tune in Tw.N. II. iii. 108 is taken by some editors to be an error for out o’ time (cf. l. 90); and in a musical age the dependence of music on correct time was often referred to (cf. III. iv. 142-3). Shakespeare makes Richard II exclaim, ’How sour sweet music is When time is broke’ (R2 V. v. 42-3), and Touchstone’s objection that ;the note was very untuneable’ is refuted by ’We kept time’ (AYL V. iii. 33-4). Cf. Middleton, A Fair Quarrel, I. i. 100, ’I had thought soldiers Had been musical, would not strike out of time’; Massinger, The Roman Actor, II. i. 227, ’The motion of the spheres are out of time’. "