Line 2805-10 - 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
| 2805-6 Oph. I hope all will be well, we must be patient, | but I cannot chuse | |
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| 2806-7 but weepe to thinke they {would} <should> | lay him i’th cold ground, my brother | |
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| 2807-8 shall know of it, | and so I thanke you for your good counsaile. Come | |
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| 2808-9 my | Coach, {God night} <Goodnight> Ladies, {god night.} | |
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| 2809-10 Sweet Ladyes | {god night, god night} <Goodnight, goodnight.> <Exit.> | |
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1773 gent1
gent1
2805-10 I hope . . . god night] Gentleman (ed. 1773): “The author has fancied Ophelia’s madness well, affectingly, and furnished it with suitable expression; we like the object, are entertained with her flights, and commiserate the frenzy.”
1780 malsi
malsi: Marlowe analogue
2808-9 Come my Coach] Malone (1780, p. 382): “In Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, 1591, Zabina in her frenzy uses the same expression: ‘Hell make ready my coach, my chair, my jewels. I come, I come.’ Malone.”
1819 mclr
mclr
2307 my brother . . . of it] Coleridge (ms. notes in Theobald, ed. 1773 [BM C.45.a.21.]): “The conjunction here (in her whole speech in 4.5) of these two thoughts that had never subsisted in disjunction, the love for Hamlet and her filial love, and the guiless floating on the surface of her pure imagination of the cautions so lately expressed and the fears not too delicately awakened by her father and brother concerning the danger to which her honor lay exposed—Thought and affliction, passion, murder ? she turns to favor and to prettiness. This play of association is sweetly instanced in the close. ‘My brother shall know of it: and I thank you for your good counsel.’”
Transcribed by BWK.
1832 cald2
cald2 ≈ malsI
2808-9 Come my Coach] Malone (apud ed. 1832): “‘Make ready my coach, my chair, my jewels. I come, I come.’ Zabina in her phrenzy—Tamberlaine. Malone.”
1857 fieb
fieb: Walker
2806 chuse] Fiebig (ed. 1857): “We learn by a remark of John Walker, that this word is sometimes improperly written chuse, which is a needless departure from its French etymology in choisir, as well as from the analogy in the preterit chose.”
1864 Kellogg
Kellogg: Brigham
2805-10 Kellogg (1864, p. 14): <n><p.14> “*The late distinguished Dr. Brigham, than whom no man in modern times has observed the insane more carefully, asserted that he had seen all of Shakspeare’s characters in the wards of the Utica Asylum, of which he was physician-in-chief. Here, too, says he, ‘is Ophelia, past cure, past hope, sitting at the piano and singing songs of Moore and other modern poets, as the Ophelia of Shakspeare sang the songs of the poets of his own times.’ We think we know to whom he refers . . . . The causes, too, of her insanity are known to have been similar to those of the Ophelia of the poet, namely, domestic sorrow and blighted affections. At times, she is obscene; though, like her great prototype, apparently as unconscious of this now as she is of all her early sorrows. She decks herself fantastically, constructs the most curious and fantastic things and will sit at the piano, and, with much taste, sing the songs of brighter days, together with her own strange and wild improvisations. And so her life is gliding away, if not happily, at least without the consciousness of the early sorrows that have overthrown her.” </p.14></n>
1882 elze2
elze2: Rom. //
2806 I cannot chuse] Elze (ed. 1882): “Compare Rom. [1.3.50ff. (398ff.)]: —’Yet I cannot chuse but laugh, To thinke it should leaue crying and say I.”
elze2: Rom. //
2806-7 they would lay] Elze (ed. 1882): “The passage in Romeo and Iuliet just quoted [1.3.50ff. (398ff.)] seems to speak in favour of should.”
See n. 2806
elze2 ≈ Dyce ed. of Marlowe analogue)
2808-9 Come my Coach] Elze (ed. 1882): “In Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great, Part I, V, 2 (Works, ed. Dyce, in I vol., p. 35a) Zabina, in the height of her madness, likewise calls for her coach: Make ready my coach, my chair, my jewels. Dyce remarks on this passage, that Shakespeare seems to have remembered it, when he made Ophelia say, Come, my coach!”
1890 irv2
irv2 ≈ elze without attribution
2808-9 Come my Coach] Symons (Irving & Marshall, ed. 1890): “Dyce, in his edition of Marlowe, notes that Shakespeare seems to have had in mind a passage in Tamburlaine, part I, 5.2, where Zabina, raving in her madness, cries ‘Make ready my coach, my chair, my jewels.’”
1891 dtn
dtn
2806 cannot . . . weepe] Deighton (ed. 1891): “cannot help weeping; cannot choose to do anything but weep.”
dtn
2806 to thinke] Deighton (ed. 1891): “at the thought that; the infinitive used indefinitely.”
1934 cam3
cam3: xrefs.
2809-10 God night] Wilson (ed. 1934): Good night] “(F1) Q2 ‘God night.’ Cf. notes [4.5.42-43 (2784-85)] above and [2.2.182 (1219)].”
1939 kit2
kit2 ≈ dtn + xref.
2806 cannot . . . weep] Kittredge (ed. 1939): “cannot help weeping. Cf. [4.7.65 (3075)].”
1980 pen2
pen2
2808-9 Come my Coach] Spencer (ed. 1980): “Perhaps she imagines herself to be a stately princess or Hamlet’s queen.”
pen2
2809 Ladies . . . Sweet Ladyes] Spencer (ed. 1980): “The only female present is the Queen (unless she has attendants).”
1982 ard2
ard2 ≈ irv2 (Marlowe analogue) without attribution
2808-9 my coach] Jenkins (ed. 1982): “Cf. i Tamburlaine, 5.1.315, where the mad Zabina calls for her coach in order to join her dead husband.”
1987 oxf4
oxf4 ≈ ard2 (Marlowe analogue) without attribution
2808-9 Come, my coach] Hibbard (ed. 1987): “These words look like a reminiscence of another made scene, the suicide of Zabina in Marlowe’s 1 Tamburlaine 5.2.242-56, where immediately before she brains herself the Turkish Empress cries out, ‘Make ready my coach.’”
1993 dent
dent
2807 lay . . . ground] Andrews (ed. 1993): “Place him without proper ceremony in the earth, rather than accord him the dignity of a stone vault.”
dent
2810 god night] Andrews (ed. 1993): “Like good night, an abbreviation of ‘God give you good night.’”
2006 ard3q2
ard3q2: Eastward Ho, Tamburlaine analogues
2808-9 my coach] Thompson & Taylor (ed. 2006): “Editors cite Marlowe’s Tamburlaine , part 1 (c. 1587), 5.1.315, where the mad Zabina calls for her coach just before killing herself, but Ophelia’s use of the phrase here is not necessarily inappropriate if she is intending to go out. The moment is parodied in Eastward Ho , 3.2.30-35, when Gertrude longs for her coach.”
2006 ard3q2
ard3q2: 2715-17 xref; Eliot
2809 Goodnight, ladies] Thompson & Taylor (ed. 2006): “Unless there are more courtiers present, the Queen is the only other lady onstage; if Ophelia addresses the King and/or other male courtiers here, her confusion or conflation of genders echoes that of Hamlet at 4.3.48-50 [2715-17]. Her ominous repetition of goodnight also echoes Hamlet’s exit at the end of 3.4 -- and is itself echoed at the end of section 2 of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922), though he does not record the parallel in his notes.”
2805 2806 2807 2808 2809 2810