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.

1939 kit2

kit2

2768 How now] Kittredge (ed. 1939): “Merely a courteous greeting like ‘How do you do?’”

1982 ard2

ard2: xrefs.; Munro, Coleridge, Long, P.J.Seng, Wm. Linley, S. Arnold, Chappell , knt (Pictorial ed.), v1877, Caulfield, Naylor, Sternfeld,

2768 sings] Jenkins (ed. 1982): “For Ophelia’s songs. The commentators have always linked Ophelia’s songs specifically with her grief for her father—guided no doubt by the Gentleman’s preliminary comment, ‘She speaks much of her father’ (2749), by various further references in the dialogue [4.5.45 (2787)], 4.5.68-71 (2805-8)], 4.5.79 (2816)], 2936-7), and by the dominant death and burial motifs in the songs themselves. A typical comment says that ‘Ophelia shows herself distressed by the ideas of death and the grave in connection with her father’s end (Munro). But the songs of course are not factual and it is a fallacy to suppose that they necessarily allude to actual events. The simple equation of the buried man with Polonius belongs with that strange theory which once supposed that what happens to the maiden in the Valentine song must have happened to Ophelia herself. What the songs must connect with are the fancies which arise in Ophelia’s mind released from rational control. Three of the five songs are about death [4.5.24ff. (2769ff.), 4.5.165ff. (2917ff.), 4.5.190ff. (2941ff.)], but the first is explicitly about the death and burial of a ‘true love’, which is hardly Polonius’s role. Three in their different kinds are songs about a lover, and in each case (since the fifth song comes as a rejoinder to the fourth) a lover by whom the lady is forsaken. So while it is true that the songs most obviously connect with the recent death and burial of Polonius, they also express on a deeper level Ophelia’s fantasies about Hamlet. (See next note) Coleridge observed (i.30) ‘the conjunction here of these two thoughts that had never subsisted in disjunction, the love for Hamlet and her filial love’. The appropriateness of the person to whom the songs are sung may also be more than coincidence (cf. Long, Shakespeare’s Use of Music, iii.115): the first, about a dead but unmourned love, is sung to Gertrude; the second, a song of seduction, to the seducer Claudius; the third, a funeral elegy, to the son of the man just buried.

“The best and fullest account of the songs (though it does not give the music) is that of P.J. Seng, The Vocal Songs of Shakespeare, pp. 131-56. Though not extant elsewhere, they are clearly all fragments of popular ballads. The first two lines of the first occur with variations in analogous ballads (see next note) and Bonny sweet Robin (2938) is known from other allusions and the frequent citation of its tune.

“The tunes to which the songs are usually sung, some at least of which descend from airs of Shakespeare’s time, were written down early in the 19th century by Wm. Linley and Samuel Arnold from actresses who had sung them at Drury Lane. See Linley, Shakespeare’s Dramatic Songs, ii.23-4; Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time, 1.236. Except for the third song, ‘They bore him bare-fac’d. . .’, which Linley tells us was usually omitted on the stage, the tunes were printed by Linley (ii. 50-2) and Chappell (i.227-37, and A Collection of National English Airs, ii.20-1, 110). They are accordingly given in, among other places, Chas. Knight’s Pictorial Edition of Shakespeare, Tragedies i.151-4 (except for Bonny sweet Robin); Furness; Caulfield, A Collection of the Vocal Music in Shakespeare’s Plays, 11.83-9; Naylor, Shakespeare and Music, rev. 1931, pp. 189-91; Sternfeld, Music in Shakespearean Tragedy, 1963, pp.60-78 (with the most authoritative discussion); Sternfeld, Songs from Shakespeare’s Tragedies. 1964 (arranged for modern performance); Long, Shakespeare’s Use of Music. iii. (1971), 124-7.”

1987 oxf4

oxf4: Raleigh analogue

2768-69 How . . . one] Hibbard (ed. 1987): “These two lines are very close in wording to the beginning of the second stanza of the celebrated ‘Walsingham’ ballad often attributed to Sir Walter Raleigh. In Agnes Latham’s edition of The Poems of Sir Walter Raleigh (1951), pp. 22-3, they run thus: ‘How shall I know your true love / That have met many one’.”

1993 dent

dent

2768 How now] Andrews (ed. 1993): “Both (a) how are you, and (b) what may I do for you.”

1999 Dessen & Thomson

Dessen & Thomson

2768 sings] Dessen & Thomson(1999): “widely used stage business (roughly 320 signals) with lyrics for the song sometimes given . . . .”