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Line 2313 - 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.

2313 It hath the primall eldest curse vppont,	3.3.37

1710 Gildon

Gildon

2313 eldest] Gildon (1710, p.lxix: glossary, eld): “age, antiquity, forefathers, old times.”

1747-53 mtby4

mtby4

2313 primall eldest curse] Thirlby (1747-53): “fsql primitive curse | Upon’t.”

1774 capn

capn

2313 primall] Capell (1774, 1:1: glossary, primal, primy): “Hamlet,” (H. 18, 29 & 78, 24) where they signify—primary.”

1857 fieb

fieb

2313 primall] Fiebig (ed. 1857): “Primal, first, original, is an obsolete word.”

1877 neil

neil: Genesis

2313 primall eldest curse] Neil (ed. 1877): “Gen. iv, 3-13.”

1878 rlf1

rlf1: Tmp. //

2313 eldest] Rolfe (ed. 1878): “Used now only in the sense of eldest-born. Cf. Tmp. [5.1.186 (2163)]: ‘your eld’st acquaintance cannot be three hours.’”

1937 pen1

pen1

2313 primall eldest curse] Harrison (ed. 1937): “the first curse, laid on Cain for the murder of his brother.”

1939 kit2

kit2 ≈ neil (Genesis analogue)

2313 primall eldest curse] Kittredge (ed. 1939): “See Genesis iv. 10-12.”

1947 yal2

yal2

2313 primall] Cross & Brooke (ed. 1947): “primeval.”

1957 pel1

pel1 ≈ pen1

2313 primal eldest curse] Farnham (ed. 1957): “primal eldest curse that of Cain, who also murdered a brother.”

1974 evns1

evns1 ≈ pel1

2313 primall eldest curse] Evans (ed. 1974): “i.e. God’s curse on Cain, who also slew his brother.”

1980 pen2

pen2

2313 primall eldest curse] Spencer (ed. 1980): “(the oldest curse upon mankind).”

1982 ard2

ard2 ≈ kit2 + magenta underlined

2313 primall eldest curse] Jenkins (ed. 1982): “Genesis iv.11-12. This reference to Cain is ironically anticipated at 287 and echoed at 3268-9.”

1988 bev2

bev2 ≈ evns1

2313 the primall eldest curse] Bevington (ed. 1988): “the curse of Cain, the first murderer; he killed his brother Abel.”

1992 Adelman

Adelman

2313 the primall eldest curse] Adelman (1992, p. 25, quoted by Griffiths, 2005, p. 79): “[T]his version of Cain and Abel turns out in part to be a cover for the even more primary story implicit in the unweeded garden, the prior explanation for the entrance of death into the world: the murder here turns not on the winning of a father’s favor but on the body of a woman; and Old Hamlet is poisoned in his orchard-garden (1.5.35; 3.2.255) by the ’serpent’ who wears his crown (1.5.39). On the surface of the text, that is, the story of Adam and Eve has been displaced, the horrific female body at its center occluded: Eve is conspicuously absent from the Cain-and-Abel version of the fall. But if the plot rewrites the Fall as a story of fratricidal rivalry, locating literal agency for the murder in Claudius, a whole network of images and associations replaces his literal agency with Gertrude’s, replicating Eve in her by making her both the agent and the locus of death. Beneath the story of fratricidal rivalry is the story of the woman who conduces to death, of the father fallen not through his brother’s treachery but through his subjection to this woman; and despite Gertrude’s conspicuous absence from the scene in the garden, in this psychologized version of the Fall, the vulnerability of the father - and hence of the son - to her poison turns out to be the whole story.”

1997 evns2

evns2 = evns1

2003 ShQ

Hirschfeld: Adelman

2313 Hirschfeld (2003, p. 426): “Although Janet Adelman suggests that references to Cain’s murder of Abel serve as a ’cover’ for the play’s more fundamental fixation on a deadly parental sexuality figured by Adam and Eve, I argue here that Hamlet’s conspicuous references to the brothers are a species of traumatic repetition--a repetition that, like Cain’s crime, not only follows from (or covers over) this mortal sexuality but confirms it. The logic of this repetition might be seen to structure Claudius’s lamentation that his offense ’hath the primal eldest curse upon’t’ (3.3.37): he confounds the first murder with the first curse (and thus the sin that precipitated it). Such an argument is part of a larger claim that the play represents a set of responses by the protagonist not only to the death of a father but also to the death of the first father, Adam; the death of Hamlet Senior, that is, catapults his son into the consideration of another paternal death.”

2006 ard3q2

ard3q2: ≈ bev2; 287 xref; Genesis

2313 primall eldest curse] Thompson & Taylor (ed. 2006): “The first murder in Judaeo-Christian tradition is Cain’s killing of his brother Abel; see Genesis, 4.11-12, and 1.2.105 [287].”