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Line 3850 - 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).

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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.”

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Notes for lines 2951-end ed. Hardin A. Aasand

For explanation of sigla, such as jen, see the editions bib.

3850 And flights of Angels sing thee to thy rest.	5.2.360

1613 Marston

Marston, probable allusion noted by elze 1882, p. 249

3850 flights . . . rest] Marston (The Insatiate Countesse, 1613, apud Furnivall in Ingleby et al. 1932, 1: 236): Cardinall. ’An host of Angels be thy conuey hence.’ Ingleby did not admit the allusion in 1874, but A. H. Bullen (p. 249 n) says: “There are heaps of echoes from Hamlet in this play . . . . ”

1747 warb

warb

3850 And . . . rest] Warburton (ed. 1747) : “What language is this of flights singing. We should certainly read, And flights of angels WING thee to thy Rest. i.e. carry thee to Heaven.”

1748 Edwards

Edwards : warb

3850 And . . . rest] Edwards (1748 [1st ed.], p. 16; rpt. 7th ed., 1972, p. 49): <p. 16> “What language is this? [referring to Warburton’s note] why English certainly, if he understood it. A flight is a stock, and is a very common expression, as a flight of woodcocks, &c. If it had not been bneath a profess’d critic to consult a Dictionary, he might have found it rendered, Grex avium , in Littleton; Une volée in Boyer; and why a flight of angels may not sing, rests upon Mr. Warburton to shew.”´</p. 16>

[Ed. HLA: This is Cannon 2: He has a right to alter any passage which he does not understand].

1765 Heath

Heath : warb

3850 And . . . rest] Heath (1765, p. 551) : “And flights of angels wing thee to thy rest! ]] This is an alteration of Mr. Warburton’s. The common reading was, ‘And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest !’ Which the reader may see fully justified in the Canons of Criticism, p. 11.“

1773 v1773

v1773 : see n. 3848-49

mSTV1 Mss. notes by steevens in v1773 (Folger Library)

mSTV1 : warb VN

3850 And . . . rest]

1778 v1778

v1778 : see n. 3848-49

1783 malsii

malsii : see n. 3848-9

3850 And . . . rest] Malone (1783, p. 60) : “The concluding words of the unfortunate Lord Essex’s prayer on the scaffold were these:—’and when my life and body shall part, send thy blessed angels, which may receiue my soule, and conuey it to the joys in heauen.’

“Hamlet had certainly been exhibited before the execution of that amiable nobleman; but the words here given to Horatio might have been one of the many additions made to this play. As no copy of an earlier date than 1604 has yet been discovered, whether Lord Essex’s last words were in our author’s thoughts, cannot now be ascertained.”

1785 v1785

v1785 : see n. 3848-9

1790 mal

mal : (see also n. 3848-9)

1793 v1793

v1793 : see 3848-9

1803 v1803

v1803 : see n. 3848-9

1813 v1813

v1813 : see n. 3848-9

1821 v1821

v1821 : see n. 3848-9

1858 col3

col3 : mcol1 : see 3903-06

3851-3907] Collier (ed. 1858) : “The remainder of the tragedy is struck through with a pen in the corr. fo. 1632, and the word Finis subjoined, to show that it was there at an end. The concluding lines also are thus converted into a couplet:— ‘Now cracks a noble heart: good night, be blest, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.’ Another ‘tag’ is added afterwards, of a very poor and inanimate character, most unlike the language of Shakespeare, which, it seems, the performer of the part of Horatio was also to deliver when the piece was abbreviated: it is as follows:— ‘While I remain behind to tell a tale, That shall hereafter turn the hearers pale.’ Although the conclusion is hastened in this way, the old annotator has continued his corrections to the end of the tragedy, as it has come down to us; but from what source he derived his information we know not: perhaps he had at one time witnessed the performance in its entirety, and had remedied defects from the recitation of the actors.”

1877 v1877

v1877 = col3

3851-3907]

1882 elze2

elze2

3850 flights of Angels] Elze (ed. 1882): ‘Compare Marston, The Insatiate Countess, A.V (Works, Halliwell, III< 188): ‘Car[dinall]. A host of angels be thy convey hence, a passage which has not been admitted into Dr. Ingleby’s Centurie of Prayse. Milton, Paradise Regained, II, 385:—’And call swift flgihts of angels ministrant array’d in glory on my cup to attend.’”

1929 trav

trav

3850 flights of Angels] Travers (ed. 1929): “‘Occurrite, Angeli Domini, Suscipientes animan ejus” (Roman Catholic prayer after a death).

trav

3850 rest] Travers (ed. 1929): “requiem æternam" (Rom. Cath. burial service). --- On the modern stage, this line is generally made to provide the climax upon which the curtain should come down. But not only had the Elizabethan front-stage, or stage proper, no curtain behind which both the living and the dead should leave it at once; an Elizabethan audience (apart from its appreciation of soldiers, their ‘music’ and ‘the rites of war’ paid to a dead Prince) would expect some indica- tion of how things were going to settie down. For various reasons, in fact, both inaterial and mental, the Shakespearean (and generally the Elizabethan) practice, in tragedy, as critics have pointed out, was to lessen the emotional tension at the close by showing life and thought resuming their more usual course. In this connection, one may note that the speech of young Fortinbras at sight oœ all these dead (364-367) will be the last flight of poetic imagination in the play.”

1934 cam3

cam3 ≈ malsii (minus “As no . . . ascertained”)

3850 And . . . rest] Wilson (ed. 1934): “Cf. Introd., pp. lxv-lxvi): <p. lxv> “. . . if, as many have believed and as I have elsewhere mainted, the emotional stimulus for his creation came to Shakespeare from the career and personality of the most conspicuous figure in England during the last decade of the sixteenth century, namely the brilliant, the moody, the excitable, the unstable, the procrastinating, the ill-fated Earl of Essex, one thing at least may be said. That being so, the contemporary audience must have pondered the character of Hamlet free from the bewilderment that afflects modern critics and readers, though with a sense of mystery not a whit less profound.” </p. lxvi>

1980 pen2

pen2

3850 Spencer (ed. 1980): “may companies of angels sing.”

1982 ard2

ard2 : Frye (Sh. and Christian Doctrine)

3850 Jenkins (ed. 1982): “No specific source can be allged or should be sought for so traditional a conception. But cf. e.g. the antiphon of the old Latin burial service, ‘In paradisum deducant te angeli . . . Chorus angelorum te suscipiat . . . aeternam habeas requiem’; Everyman, ll. 891-3, ‘Methinketh that I hear angels sing . . . where Everyman’s sould received shall be’. See R.M. Frye, Sh. and Christian Doctrine, pp. 135-6. Not all who quote this line recognize that sing is optative.”

1987 oxf4

oxf4

3850 flights] Hibbard (ed. 1987): “companies.”

1993 dent

dent ≈

3850 Andrews (ed. 1989): "Horatio’s benediction is a very different mode from the ’Roman’ sentiments he uttered a moment earlier."

2001 Greenblatt

Greenblatt

3850 Greenblatt (2001, p.51) <p. 51> connects ’flights of angels’ with depictions of souls wafted out of purgatory by singing angels: ’If depictions of the afterlife are any indication, the flying of the angels here is as important as their singing.’; </p. 51>