Line 2551 - 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.
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Notes for lines 2023-2950 ed. Frank N. Clary
| 2551 That I must be their scourge and minister, 2551 | 3.4.175 |
|---|
1856 hud1 (1851-6)
hud1
2551 their] Hudson (ed. 1851-6): “The pronoun their refers, apparently, to heaven, which is here a collective noun, put for the heavenly powers. H.”
1857 fieb
fieb
2551 their scourge and minister] Fiebig (ed. 1857): “Their scourge and minister, i.e. heaven’s minister, and Polonius’ scourge.”
1861 wh1
wh1 ≈ hud1
2551 their] White (ed. 1861): “i.e., the scourge and minister of Heaven.”
1872 hud2
hud2 = hud1 minus “apparently”
1877 v1877
2551 their]
Furness (ed. 1877): “For instances of Shakespeare’s use of
Heaven as a plural, see
Walker Crit. ii, 110.”
1878 rlf1
rlf1: R2 //; xref.
2551 their] Rolfe (ed. 1878): “For other examples of the plural use of heaven, see R2 [1.2.6 (223)]. Cf. heavens, [2.2.38 (1060)] above.”
1885 macd
macd
2551 their] MacDonald (ed. 1885): “The noun to which their is the pronoun is heaven—as if he had written the gods.”
1903 rlf3
rlf3 = rlf1 minus R2 // for their (2551)
1934 cam3
cam3: xref.; Matth.
2551 their scourge and minister] Wilson (ed. 1934): “i.e. at once the officer of Heaven’s justice and the lash he wields. A reference to the public flogging of criminals; cf. note [3.1.69 (1724)] and Matth. v. 25 (Bishops’ Bible, 1572) ‘Least...the judge deliuer thee to the minister.’ Ham. is a ‘fell sergeant’ [5.2.336 (3820)] for the arrest of Pol. but with a ‘scourge’ for his own back. Heaven is plur., as often in Sh.”
1939 kit2
kit2: xref.
2551 their . . . minister] Kittredge (ed. 1939): “heaven’s scourge (of punishment) and heaven’s agent—minister of divine retribution. Their refers to heaven [3.4.173 (2549)]. The use of a plural pronoun to refer to the singular noun heaven is common.”
1974 evns1
evns1: Marlowe analogue
2551 scourge and minister] Evans (ed. 1974): “the agent of heavenly justice against human crime. Scourge suggests a permissive cruelty (Tamburlaine was the ‘scourge of God’), but ‘woe to him by whom the offense cometh’; the scourge must suffer for the evil it performs.”
1980 pen2
pen2
2551 scourge and minister] Spencer (ed. 1980): “both the lash which inflicts punishment and the officer who administers it.”
1982 ard2
ard2: Walker
2551 their] Jenkins (ed. 1982): “the heavenly powers’. The use of heaven in plural sense is common: see Walker, ii.110-13.”
ard2: Prosser, Jorgensen, Bowers, Sisson, Skulsky, Dent, H. Brooks; Isaiah analogue; 2H6, R3 //s
2551 scourge and minister] Jenkins (ed. 1982): “ln. Critics have sometimes succumbed to the temptation to identify these respectively with Hamlet’s two roles in the previous line. Yet both scourge and minister are agents of Heaven’s will and hence primarily describe the second (i.e. the punisher) rather than the first. No doubt scourge stresses the sterner and minister the kindlier aspect of Heaven’s righteousness; but the two cannot be regarded as necessarily distinct (as maintained by Bowers in an article which has been much too readily accepted: ‘Hamlet as Minister and Scourge’, PMLA, lxx, 740-9. Cf. Prosser, pp. 199-201 (201-3)). The words ‘were often used interchangeably’ (Jorgensen, Clio, iii, 126): the heavens may employ a ‘minister’ for their anger [2H6 5.2.34 (3256)]to give ‘chastisement’ [R3 5.3.113 (3556)], while their ‘scourge’ is not invariably the cruel tyrant that a term applied to Attila and Tamburlaine would suggest. Heaven may effect its purposes (as here) by unwitting agents and unexpected means. It may use sin to chastise sin by one who thus will merit chastisement himself (cf. Isaiah x.5-12). Hence the paradox of being (as here) both punisher and punished. It is in this sense that ‘scourge and minister’ describes Hamlet in both roles. Yet because the scourge must often be scourged, it does not follow (as Bowers seeks to argue) that this role is given only to the guilty who are foredoomed to damnation. For some counter-argument see Sisson, Shakespeare’s Tragic Justice, pp. 104-6; H. Skulsky, PMLA, lxxxv, 85; R. W. Dent, SQ, xxix, 82-4. (Cf. H. Brooks in Christopher Marlowe, ed. B. Morris, p. 92) It is also relevant, though not of course conclusive, that both phrase and idea are anticipated in Belleforest, who makes Amleth claim to be ‘le ministre et executeur de si juste vengeance’ (see Intro., p. 95).”
1984 chal
chal
2551 scourge] Wilkes (ed. 1984): “punisher.”
chal
2551 minister] Wilkes (ed. 1984): “instrument, agent.”
1984 klein
klein: contra Elliott, contra Bowers; Dent,; xref., MM, 2H6, Cor., Ant., Rom. , 1H4 //s; Tyndale, Marlowe analogues; evns
2551 scourge and minister] Klein (ed. 1984): “This is the starting point of G.R. Elliott’s book Scourge and Minister: A Study of ’Hamlet’ (Durham, NC, 1951). The religious element is active already early on, cf. Horatio [1.4.91 (679)]. With 3.3 it gains stronger momentum—earlier than Elliott postulates; and it is not usable as a structural principle, the statement here does not indicate a new phase of action. According to F. Bowers (Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 70 [1955], pp. 740-49) it is often asserted that scourge and minister are necessarily opposites. That is not proved; here they are, as R.W. Dent argues (Shakespeare Quarterly 29 [1978), pp. 82-84), synonymous or at least point in the same direction. minister sb. (2) ’one who acts under the authority of another’, as in [1.4.39 (624)], MM [5.1.115 (2484)]: "O you blessed ministers above" and 2H6 [5.2.34 (3256)], perhaps specifically analogous to (2c), cf. Cor. [3.3.98 (2383)] and Ant. [5.1.20 (3133)] (minister of justice), also e.g. Tyndale’s Bible translation, Matthew V.25: "Least [=Lest] the iudge deliuer thee to the minister" (Wilson notes: officer in the AV). scourge, literally sb. (1) ’a whip, lash’, evokes at first the image of a beadle with a whip, but is (as always in Sh.) transferred, here (2) ’a thing or person that is an instrument of divine chastisement’, cf. e.g. 2H4 [1.2.127 (395)] and [2.4.88 (1115)] as well as Rom. [4.3.25 (2505)], furthermore often in Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, esp. 1Tamburlaine, 3.3.44 and 4.2.32. Hamlet says that I must be; the task, cursed in 885-7. as an arbitrary blow of fate’s malice, is now being accepted as a tragic burden laid on him by God. It is only in this sense that one can assent to Evans’s remark "the scourge must suffer for the evil that it performs.”
1985 Ferguson
Ferguson
2551 scourge and minister] ferguson (1985, pp. 298): “It seems to me that the play questions this kind of self-justification, supplementing if not altogether invalidating Hamlet’s view of himself as a divinely appointed ’scourge.’”
1988 bev2
bev2
2551 their scourge and minister] Bevington (ed. 1988): “i.e., agent of heavenly retribution. (By scourge, Hamlet also suggests that he himself will eventually suffer punishment in the process of fulfilling heaven’s will).”
1993 dent
dent: xrefs.
2551 their scourge and minister] Andrews (ed. 1993): “Their [Heaven’s] agent. Scourge was often used to refer to an agent of Heaven who was himself evil, and who was cast off to damnation after punishing other evildoers. But Hamlet appears to be using the term as a synonym for Minister (a worthy instrument of divine justice). Strictly speaking, the same person could not be both a scourge and a minister; but Hamlet does not tend to think in rigorous theological terms. In [2.2.584 (1625)], for example, he says, ‘Prompted to my Revenge by Heaven and Hell.’ As it turns out, the consequences of his inadvertent slaying do ‘punish’ Hamlet as well as Polonius [3.4.174 (2550)].”
2006 ard3q2
ard3q2: R3 5.3.114 // ; Richmond, Stribrny, Svoboda
2551 their . . . minister] Thompson & Taylor (ed. 2006): “Hamlet sees himself as the chastising agent of the gods (their refers back to heaven in 171); see Richmond’s prayer, ’Make us Thy ministers of chastisement; (R3 5.3.114). Scourge and minister is another hendiadys (scourging minister); this idea became important in a political sense in many productions of Hamlet in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, with Hamlet seen as the self-sacrificing hero who could cleanse the state of corruption and oppression (see Stribrny, especially 115-16 on productions by Josef Svoboda before and after the ’Prague Spring’ of 1968).”
2551