murderer;-leave thy damnable faces, and begin. Come; The croaking raven Doth bellow for revenge. Luc. Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing; Confederate season, else no creature seeing; [Pours the Poison into the Sleeper's Ears. Ham. He poisons him i' the garden for his estate. His name's Gonzago: the story is extant, and written in very choice Italian: You shall see anon, how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago's wife. Oph. The king rises. Ham. What! frighted with false fire! King. Give me some light:-away! [Exeunt all but HAMLET and HORATIO. Ham. Why, let the strucken deer go weep 37, For some must watch, while some must sleep; Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers (if the rest of my fortunes turn Turk 38 with me), with two 36 Midnight weeds.' Thus in Macbeth : 'Root of hemlock, digg'd i' the dark.' 37 See note on As You Like It, Act ii. Sc. 1, p. 130. 38 To turn Turk was a familiar phrase for any violent change of condition or character. provincial roses on my razed 39 shoes, get me a fel lowship in a cry 40 of players, sir? Hor. Half a share 41. Ham. A whole one, I. For thou dost know, O Damon dear, Of Jove himself; and now reigns here Hor. You might have rhymed. Ham. Upon the talk of the poisoning, 39 [Provincial roses] on my razed shoes.' Provincial was erroneously changed to Provençal, at the suggestion of Warton. Mr. Douce rectified the error by showing that the Provincial roses took their name from Provins, in Lower Brie, and not from Provence. Razed shoes are most probably embroidered shoes. The quarto reads, rac'd. To race, or rase, was to stripe. 40 [A cry of players.] It was usual to call a pack of hounds a cry; from the French meute de chiens: it is here humorously applied to a troop or company of players. It is used again in Coriolanus: Menenius says to the citizens, 'You have made good work, you and your cry.' In the very curious catalogue of The Companyes of Bestys, given in The Boke of St. Albans, many equally singular terms may be found, which seem to have exercised the wit and ingenuity of our ancestors; as a thrave of throshers, a scull or shoal of monks, &c. 41 The players were paid not by salaries, but by shares or portions of the profit, according to merit. See Malone's Account of the Ancient Theatres, passim. 42 [A very, very-peacock.] The old copies read paiock, and paiocke. The peacock was as proverbially used for a proud fool as the lapwing for a silly one. 'Pavoneggiare, to court it, to brave it, to peacockise it, to wantonise it, to get up and down fondly, gazing upon himself as a peacocke does.'-Florio, Ital. Dict. 1598. Theobald proposed to read paddock; and in the last scene Hamlet bestows this opprobrious name upon the king. Mr. Blakeway has suggested that we might read puttock, which means a base degenerate hawk, a kite; which Shakspeare does indeed contrast with the eagle in Cymbeline, Act i. Sc. 2:'I chose an eagle, and did avoid a puttock.' Hor. I did very well note him. Ham. Ah, ha! - Come, some musick; come, the recorders 43. For if the king like not the comedy, Why then, belike, he likes it not, perdy 44. Enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. Come, some musick. Guil. Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you. Ham. Sir, a whole history. Guil. The king, sir, Ham. Ay, sir, what of him? Guil. Is, in his retirement, marvellous distem pered. Ham. With drink, sir? Guil. No, my lord, with choler. Ham. Your wisdom should show itself more richer, to signify this to the doctor; for, for me to put him to his purgation, would, perhaps, plunge him into more choler. Guil. Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame, and start not so wildly from my affair. Ham. I am tame, sir :-pronounce. Guil. The queen, your mother, in most great affliction of spirit, hath sent me to you. Ham. You are welcome. Guil. Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not of the right breed. If it shall please you to make me a wholesome answer, I will do your mother's com 43 [The recorders.] See note on a Midsummer Night's Dream, Act i. Sc. 1. It is difficult to settle exactly the form of this instrument: old writers in general make no distinction between a flute, a pipe, and a recorder; but Hawkins has shown clearly, from a passage in Lord Bacon's Natural History, that the flute and the recorder were distinct instruments. 44 Perdy is a corruption of the French par Dieu. mandment: if not, your pardon, and my return shall be the end of my business. Ham. Sir, I cannot. Guil. What, my lord? Ham. Make you a wholesome answer; my wit's diseased: But, sir, such answer as I can make, you shall command; or, rather, as you say, my mother: therefore no more, but to the matter; My mother, you say, Ros. Then thus she says: Your behaviour hath struck her into amazement and admiration. Ham. O wonderful son, that can so astonish a mother! But is there no sequel at the heels of this mother's admiration? impart. Ros. She desires to speak with you in her closet, ere you go to bed. Ham. We shall obey, were she ten times our mother. Have you any further trade with us? Ros. My lord, you once did love me. Ham. And do still, by these pickers and stealers. Ros. Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper? you do, surely, but bar the door upon your own liberty, if you deny your griefs to your friend. Ham. Sir, I lack advancement. Ros. How can that be, when you have the voice of the king himself for your succession in Den mark? Ham. Ay, sir, but While the grass grows, the proverb is something musty. Enter the Players, with Recorders. O, the recorders:-let me see one. To withdraw with you 45.-Why do you go about to recover the 45 To withdraw with you.' Malone added here a stage direction [Taking Guild. aside.] Steevens thinks it an answer to wind of me 46, as if you would drive me into a toil? Guil. O, my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too unmannerly 47. Ham. I do not well understand that. Will you play upon this pipe? Guil. My lord, I cannot. Ham. I pray you. Guil. Believe me, I cannot. Ham. I do beseech you. Guil. I know no touch of it, my lord. Ham. 'Tis as easy as lying: govern these ventages 48 with your fingers and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent musick. Look you, these are the stops. Guil. But these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony; I have not the skill. Ham. Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me? You would play upon me; a motion Guildenstern had used, for Hamlet to withdraw with him. I think that it means no more than to draw back with you,' to leave that scent or trail. It is a hunting term, like that which follows. 46 To recover the wind of me.' This is a term which has been left unexplained. It is borrowed from hunting, as the context shows; and means, to take advantage of the animal pursued, by getting to the windward of it, that it may not scent its pursuers. 'Observe how the wind is, that you may set the net so as the hare and wind may come together; if the wind be sideways it may do well enough, but never if it blow over the net into the hare's face, for he will scent both it and you at a distance.'-Gentleman's Recreation. 47 Hamlet may say with propriety, 'I do not well understand that.' Perhaps Guildenstern means, 'If my duty to the king makes me too bold, my love to you makes me importunate even to rudeness.' 48 The ventages are the holes of the pipe. The stops means the mode of stopping those ventages to produce notes. Malone has made it the 'sounds produced. Thus in King Henry V. Prologue : 'Rumour is a pipe And of so easy and so plain a stop.' |
