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.

1870 Miles

Miles

3444 Miles (1870, 74): <p. 74>“His plunge into the open grave is unworthy of the mountebank from whom he bought the mortal unction; his invocation enough to madden any honest onlooker. All that palpable rant, all that sham despair, all that base mortal thunder, in the holy grave of the unpolluted girl! [cites 3439-48]” </p. 74>

1885 macd

macd

3444 SD Leaps in the graue] MacDonald (ed. 1885): “This stage direction is not in the Quarto [Q2].

“Here the 1st Quarto has:— [cites CLN 2045-50]”

1913 Adams

Adams

3444 SD Leaps in the graue] Adams (1913, pp. 39-40): <p. 39>“The leaping of Laertes and of Hamlet into the grave of Ophelia has always seemed to me both startling and unpleasing. Surely the dead body of the unfortunate Ophelia might be </p. 39> <p. 40>spared such an outrage. Moreover, the action seems rather inappropriate on the part of Laertes, who throughout invariably does what he thinks the world expects of him. No editor of the play, so far as I am aware, has attempted, by any explanation, to make this action less startling or less painful to the reader.

“Recently, while examining Richard Brathwaite’s play, Mercurius Britanicus (1640), I came upon the following passage: ‘What can’t thou finde in this spacious Theatre of the world, which is worthy thy smallest teare? where servants are made Lords, Lords servants: the Masters head is cut off, the servant riseth up and climbes into his place; wives bewaile the funerall of their husbands, counterfeit teares, and offer to leape into their graves; and yet before one worme hath entred into the winding sheete, or before the flowres are withered wherewith the coarse was garnished, they entertaine new affections, and kindle new nuptiall tapers.’

“Does this passage suggest that offering to leap into the grave was in the seventeenth century sometimes used as an exaggerated expression of sorrow? There is absolutely nothing to indicate that Brathwaite was echoing Hamlet. If we can believe that Laertes’s conduct was suggested by the occurrence even rarely of this sensational mode of expressing sorrow, we can better understand the scene in Hamlet; for Laertes’s conduct would then appear more natural, and, like his bearing the King with a drawn sword, thoroughly in keeping with his newly assumed role of a melodramatic hero. Of course more references to leaping into the grave (as a real or an imaginary way of expressing sorrow)2 are needed to render this suggestion plausible.” <p. 40>

<n>2 “It is not necessary to conceive of the ‘leaping into the grave’ as an actual custom; it may have figured merely in the imagination of the literary artist.”

1914 Stewart

Stewart : see also n. 3449-53

3444 Stewart (1914, pp. 216-7): <p. 216> “But note what suddenly takes place. While Hamlet and Horatio are lying ’hidden among the tombstones, their presence being quite unknown to the people at the grave, Laertes is very naturally overcome with grief as they prepare to throw the dirt upon his sister, and he expresses this grief feelingly. Immediately Hamlet leaps from his hiding place, jumps into the grave and accuses Laertes of doing all this simply to ‘outface’ him.- Whereas it is made plain that Laertes could not have known that Hamlet was anywhere about! Hamlet’s mood is not one of sorrow or of love for Ophelia, but purely of rage at Laertes who would thus ‘outface’ him, and of disdain for Laertes’ expressions of grief! True, Laertes had called down curses upon the head of him who was responsible for the death of his sister; and this certainly had its effect upon Hamlet. But this does not make the inconsistency any the less. Laertes was simply indulging in natural emotion over the loss of his sister. Therefore how are we to account for the strange mood in which Hamlet took this —his inconsistent-seeming point of view? Even the theory that Hamlet still loved Ophelia does not make it clear and plain. If anything, it would make Hamlet sympathetic</p. 216><p. 217> with Laertes’ grief; for by the image of his own cause he could portray the other. But Hamlet does not take it in that spirit; he is personally affronted. To say that Hamlet was insane would be an easy way of straightening out many things; but this theory has been cast aside by critics of any insight or standing, Shakespeare has taken too much pains to show that Hamlet is not insane; the theory is untenable. Insane men do not make good drama because their motives are so inconsistent and senseless that their actions cannot hold our interest in the plot. It therefore remains to account for this scene upon Shakespearean grounds.”</p. 217>

1934 Wilson MSH

Wilson MSH

3444 Wilson (1934, 2:185-86): <p. 185> “An instructive instance occurs in 5.1. in connection with the struggle between Hamlet and Laertes over the corpse of Ophelia. Here Q2 gives no stage-directions whatever; F1 prints Leaps in the grave at [3444] after Laertes has exclaimed: ‘Hold off the earth a while Till I haue caught her once more in mine armes; </p. 185> <p. 186> while in Q1 we get not only at this point Leartes leapes into the graue but, a few lines later on, Hamlet leapes in after Leartes. That a scuffle takes place in the grave itself is the stage tradition, and the evidence of Q1, which presumably reports what the pirate saw at the Globe, is sufficient testimony; I think that this was what Shakespeare himself intended. It follows therefore that both stage-directions, or something corresponding to them, stood in Shakespeare’s manuscript, though only one reached the F1 text and neither appear in Q2. It follows further that in regard to the second direction F1 and Q2 coincide in their omission.” </p. 186>

1934 cam3

cam3: Chambers Eliz. Stage

3444 Wilson (ed. 1934): “Graves at this time were much shallower and wider than the neat deep-sunk pits of our modern burial-grounds, which would allow no room for a man to leap in beside the coffin (and that an open one), still less for two to struggle therein. On the Eliz. stage graves were represented by the open ‘trap’ (v. Chambers, Eliz. Stage, 3: 107 and cf. head-note 1.5).”

1985 cam4

cam4 ≈

3444 Edwards (ed. 1985): “Since Q2 gives ‘a corse’ rather than a ‘a coffin’ in the SD at [3405] it may be that Shakspeare thought of a bier rather than a closed coffin, but Q1 confirms that the scene as played used a coffin, sealed or not. There is no evidence that Laertes raises the corpse, as in many productions he does.”

3444 Edwards (ed. 1985, Introduction, 56): <p. 56>“. . . when Laertes leaps into the grave and expresses, too clamantly perhaps, an affection for Ophelia which he genuinely feels, Hamlet will not accept it, and chooses theis moment to advance and declare himself, with a challenge to Laertes’ sincerity. He claims [3466] ‘I loved Ophelia’—with a love forty thousand brothers could not match. It is hard to know what right Hamlet has to say that when we think of how we have seen him treat her. The dispute over Ophelia’s grave seems very important. Laertes is more than a foil to Hamlet; he is a main antagonist, diametrically opposed to him in every way of thought and action, who is scheming to kill him by a dreadful trick. But Shakespeare rfuses to belittle him or let us despise him. And he refuses to sentimentalise his opponent or whitewash his failings. For those of us who to any extent ‘believe in’ Hamlet, Shakespeare makes things difficult in this scene. It is tragedy not sentimental drama that he is writing, and our division of mind about Hamlet is partly why the play is a tragedy.” </p. 56>

1999 Dessen & Thomson

Dessen & Thomson = cam3 + in magenta underlined

3444 Leaps in the graue] F1 and Q1 CLN 2046 have Laertes [Leartes] leap into the fictional grave, actually trapdoor [see n. 1994 and Dessen & Thomson(1999) fictional]. Only Q1 CLN 2048-9 (3446-50) has Hamlet leap.