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Line 2055 - Commentary Note (CN)

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.

Notes for lines 2023-2950 ed. Frank N. Clary

For explanation of sigla, such as jen, see the editions bib.

2055 But what we doe determine, oft we breake, 2055	3.2.187

1819 cald1

cald1

2055 what. . . breake] Caldecott (ed. 1819): “i.e. unsettle our most fixed resolves.”

1832 cald2

cald2 = cald1

1877 Gervinus

Gervinus

2055-65 Gervinus (1877, p. 553): “Before there ensues any appeal to the conscience of the king [in the play scene], the poet has made use of it to speak first to the conscience of Hamlet himself, and at once to convey to the spectator the meaning of his work. Scarcely has Hamlet interpreted the language of the acted queen into ‘wormwood’ for his mother, than he himself receives the same from Gonzago, who plays the part of his father, and the voice of the ghost speaks to him again in the words:—[quotes passage].”

1929 trav

trav: Kyd analogue; xrefs.

2055 But] Travers (ed. 1929): “introduces some twenty-five lines the purport of which (especially of 175-83), together with their philosophical character, has induced some critics to recognise in them Hamlet’s “insertion” [2.2.540 (1581)]. Sequences of sententious couplets would, however, be an essential feature of a play of this type; and the very ring of such speech echoes, for example, that of the couplets in which Cicero, in Kyd’s translation of Robert Garnier’s Cornelie (1594), had reminded Pompey’s widow that “whatsoever lives is sure to die” (2.2.55) and “whatsoe’er hath been begun must end” (279). Nor is there here much temptation to “mouth” (l. 3), still less anything calculated to make Claudius’s guilt “unkennel itself” [3.2.81 (1932)]; cp. pp. 121 n. 9, 131 n. 8.”