HW HomePrevious CNView CNView TNMView TNINext CN

Line 2780 - Commentary Note (CN) More Information

Notes for lines 2023-2950 ed. Frank N. Clary
For explanation of sigla, such as jen, see the editions bib.
2780 Oph. Larded {all} with sweet flowers, 27804.5.38
1773 v1773
v1773
2780 Larded] Johnson (apud Steevens, ed. 1773): “The expression is taken from cookery.”
This new gloss is not in john1, john2 or john2 Appendix.
1778 v1778
v1778 = v1773
1785 v1785
v1785 = v1778
1790 mal
mal = v1785
1791- rann
rann
2780 Larded] Rann (ed. 1791-): “Decorated.”
1793 v1793
v1793 = v1785
1803 v1803
v1803 = v1793
1813 v1813
v1813 = v1803
1815 Becket
Becket
2780 Larded] Becket (1815, 1: 63): “Read farded, (fardé fr.) i.e. ornamented, bedecked.”
1819 cald1
cald1: xref.; Jonson analogue
2780-2 Caldecott (ed. 1819): “Larded, i.e. garnished or set out as a dish (a culinary term, found in [5.2.20 (3520)] Ham. ‘Larded with many several sort of reasons’ is also used by Jonson: ‘All which a quiet and retired life, Larded with pleasure, did avoid.’ Sejanus, III.
“His shroud, or corpse, ‘did not go bewept with true-love showers,’ for he was no love-case; his death had the tragical character of fierce outrage, and this was the primary and deepest impression upon her lost mind: for, although her disturbed imagination, ‘larded with images from love ballads,’ ‘speaking things in doubt,’ and aiming at them ‘by snatches,’ (‘made to believe’ by Hamlet, and thence crossed in the passion of love) dwelt principally upon these ideas, yet they were worked up by a wild process, and engrafted upon the groundwork, the more immediate, leading, and prominent feature and image of her father’s tragical fate, and funeral rites.”
1821 v1821
v1821 = v1813
1826 sing1
sing1
2780 Larded] Singer (ed. 1826): “Garnished.”
1832 cald2
cald2 = cald1 +
2780 Larded] Caldecott (ed. 1832): “or she felt, that something more than the ceremonial forms insisted upon by Laertes, was wanting; and that, as in that exquisite scene by the hand of Tacitus, ‘præter accertibatem parentis erepti, auxit mœstitiam quod paucioribus lachrymis compositus es; et novissima in luce desideravere aliquid oculi tui,’ i.e. ‘not duly bewept and in your last moments, in the languor of death, there was ‘something that the eye sought after in fain.’ Agricolæ Vita. ad fin.
“Contra fidem omnium codicum, and following a leader, whom they concur in reprobation, the modern editors, read ‘to the grave go;’ rejecting the negative, not.”
1856 hud1 (1851-6)
hud1 = sing1 + magenta underlined
2780-2 Hudson (ed. 1851-6): “Larded is garnished. The quartos have all after larded.—In the next line, the quartos, all but the first, have ground instead of grave; and all the old copies read, ‘did not go;’ which is against both sense and metre, and was therefore considered an error by Pope; but it seems that Ophelia purposely alters the song, to suit the ‘obscure funeral; of her father.”
1857 dyce1
dyce1: cald1, knt1, col1, col2; contra cald1
2780-2 Dyce (ed. 1857): “The old eds. have ‘—did not go,’ &c.—a reading which had been rejected for many a long year, when Caldecott with great pomp restored the ‘not’ to the text. ‘Contra fidem omnium codicum,’ he says, ‘and following a leader whom they concur in reprogating, the modern editors read ‘to the grave go,’ —Caldecott, though far advanced in life when he edited Hamlet, being, it would seem, still ignorant that a whole series of ‘codices’ will very often agree in the grossest error. ‘His shroud, or corpse, ‘did not go bewept with true-love showers,’ for his was no love-case; his death had the tragical character of fierce outrage,’ &c. &c. That any one should fail at once to perceive that the original reading ‘did not go’ is utterly irreconcilable with the preceding ‘Larded with sweet flowers!’ And that any one should have the folly to suppose that the ballad now sung by Ophelia must apply in minute particulars to her father! Enough for her that it is a ditty about death and burial; no matter that its hero is a youthful lover,—he was cut off by a sudden fate, and so far resembled Polonius.—Here Mr. Knight also retains ‘not.’—So does Mr. Collier in the first ed. of his Shakespeare, remarking, however, that it ‘may possibly be an error;’ in his one-volume ed. I find that he omits it on the authority of his Ms. Corrector.”
1857 fieb
fieb
2780 Larded] Fiebig (ed. 1857): “Larded in the meaning of covered, an expression taken from cookery, where to lard means to stuff with bacon.”
1860 Walker
Walker
2780 Larded all] Walker (1860, 3:268): “I think, with the folio—‘Larded with sweet flowers.’”
1866a dyce2
dyce2 ≈ dyce1
Dyce revises clause in CN: “but in his second edition he omits it” for “in his one-volume ed. I find that he omits it on the authority of his Ms. Corrector.”
1868 c&mc
c&mc
2780 Larded . . . flowers] Clarke & Clarke (ed. 1868, rpt. 1878): ““Larded’ strictly means stuffed with minute slices of bacon fat, from the Latin, lardum, bacon; but it came to be sometimes, as here, used for ‘garnished.””
1869 tsch
tsch: xref.
2780 Larded] Tschischwitz (ed. 1869): “Larded kommt 5.2.20, wo es ironisch ist, nochmals vor.” [Larded appears again in [5.2.20 (3520)], where it is ironic.]
tsch: Drake analogue
2780 sweet flowers] Tschischwitz (ed. 1869): “Bei den rührenden und hochpoetischen Grabgebräuchen der älteren Zeit kamen nur d u f t e n d e Blumen zur Verwendung. Drake, Shak. and his Times (1817) I. p. 244.” [In the moving and very poetic burial rites of older times, only fragrant flowers were used. Drake, Shak. and his Times (1817) I. p. 244.]
1872 hud2
hud2 = hud1
1872 cln1
cln1: cald1 (Sejanus analogue) + magenta underlined
2780 Larded] Clark and Wright (ed. 1872): “garnished, dressed with. The word occurs again in a metaphorical sense, [5.2.20 (3520)]. And in Ben Jonson’s Sejanus, 3. 2. p. 86, ed. Gifford: ‘A quiet and retired life Larded with ease and pleasure.’ Cotgrave (French Dict.) gives ‘Larder. To lard; to sticke, season, or dresse with lard.’”
1877 dyce3
dyce3 = dyce2
1878 rlf1
rlf1: cald2; cln1 (xref.)+ magenta underlined
2780 larded] Rolfe (ed. 1878): “Garnished (Caldecott). Cf. [5.2.20 (3520)] below. See also Wiv. [4.6.14 (2358)], Tro. .[5.1.57-8 (2923-4)], etc.
1881 hud3
hud3 = hud2 minus comment on altered song (2780-2)
hud3 = hud2 (for “garnished”); ≈ Beckett (for “ornamented”)
2780 Larded] Hudson (ed. 1881): “Larded is garnished, or ornamented.”
1885 macd
macd ≈ john
2780 Larded] MacDonald (ed. 1885): “This expression is, as Dr. Johnson says, taken from cookery; but it is so used elsewhere by Shakspere that we cannot regard it here as a scintillation of Ophelia’s insanity.”
1890 irv2
irv2 ≈ cln1 (incl. Jonson analogue)
2780 Larded] Symons (in Irving & Marshall, ed. 1890): “garnished.”
2780 Larded] Symons (in Irving & Marshall, ed. 1890): “Larded is used again, metaphorically, in [5.2.20 (3520)] (the only other instance in Shakespeare). Compare Ben Jonson, Sejanus, 3.2: ‘A quiet and retired life Larded wth ease and pleasure. Works, ed. Gifford, 1816, p. 86.’”
1891 dtn
dtn: Wiv. //
2780 Larded] Deighton (ed. 1891): “thickly covered; cp. Wiv. [4.6.14 (2358)], ‘The mirth so larded with my matter’; the word in this sense is generally used by Shakespeare in a figurative sense.”
1899 ard1
ard1 ≈ cln1 (incl. xref.)
2780 Larded] Dowden (ed. 1899): “garnished, as in [5.2.20 (3520)].”
1903 rlf3
rlf3 = rlf1
1904 ver
ver: Milton analogue
2780 Larded] Verity (ed. 1904): “garnished; apparently a less prosaic word then; cf. [H5 4.6.8 (2492)]. In the magnificent rhapsody that closes his treatise Of Reformation, Milton speaks of the Spanish King as ‘thirsting to revenge his naval ruins that have larded our seas’ (meaning primarily the Armada).”
1905 rltr
rltr
2780 Larded] Chambers (ed. 1905): “enriched.”
1909 subb
subb
2780-2 Subbarau (ed. 1909): “It seems to me that ‘did not go; is the correct version, did not being pronounced as one syllable: the antecedent of which is not ‘shroud,’ but ‘flowers.’ The idea is that the pilgrim-lover died in a distant and strange land and was accorded a poor man’s burial, and though his corpse was ‘larded with sweet flowers,’ yet these did not go to the grave, accompanied with showers of true-love tears.”
1906 nlsn
nlsn ≈ hud3
2780 Larded] Neilson (ed. 1906, glossary): “lard] to enrich, fatten; to garnish.”
1934 cam3
cam3: xref.
2780 Larded all with] Wilson (ed. 1934): “Q2 F1 ‘Larded with’—which all edd. follow. But Sh. gives Oph. stumbling verse in this stanza to exhibit the wandering of her mind; cf. next note [4.5.39 (2781)].”
1939 kit2
kit2 ≈ Beckett
2780 Larded] Kittredge (ed. 1939): “bedecked.”
1942 n&h
n&h ≈ Beckett
2780 Larded] Neilson & Hill (ed. 1942): “decked.”
1947 cln2
cln2: contra mod. emend. (pope etc.)
2780-1 all . . . not] Rylands (ed. 1947): “F omits ‘all’ and editors wrongly follow it. They also follow Pope in omitting ‘not’ in the next line although it is in F and both Quartos. But Ophelia is thinking of her father’s ‘obscure burial’ [2964], and the broken metre in each line expresses her distraction.”
1957 pel1
pel1= sing1
1974 evns1
evns1 ≈ n&h
2780 Larded] Evans (ed. 1974): “adorned.”
1980 pen2
pen2 = ard1 minus xref.
1982 ard2
ard2 ≈ kit2; xref.
2780 Larded] Jenkins (ed. 1982): “strewn, bedecked. The culinary verb for inserting spirits of fat extended its range till it came to mean ‘enrich’ or ‘garnish’ in a general sense and so ‘intersperse or sprinkle with ornaments’ Cf. 3520, and for the practice of strewing flowers on the board. [5.1.243 (3435)].”
1988 bev2
bev2 = rann
1997 evns2
2006 ard3q2
ard3q2: Johnson, MacDonald
2780 Larded] Thompson & Taylor (ed. 2006): “i.e. decorated (a culinary term, from the practice of inserting strips of fat or lard into meat to baste it). MacDonald comments with Victorian disapproval: ’This expression is, as Dr. Johnson says, taken from cookery; but it is so used elsewhere by Shakspere [sic] that we cannot regard it here as a scintillation of Ophelia’s insanity.’”
2780