That I have uttered: bring me to the test,
And I the matter will re-word; which madness
Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul,
That not your trespass, but my madness, speaks:
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place;
Whiles rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven;
Repent what's past: avoid what is to come;
And do not spread the compost o'er the weeds,
To make them rank. Forgive me this my virtue :
For in the fatness of these pursy times,
Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg;
Yea, curb and woo, for leave to do him good.
Queen. O Hamlet! thou hast cleft my heart
in twain.

Ham. O throw away the worser part of it,
And live the purer with the other half.
Good night but go not to mine uncle's bed;
Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
[That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat-

Of habits devil,-is angel yet in this,-
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock, or livery,
That aptly is put on :] Refrain to-night:
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence: [the next more easy;
For use almost can change the stamp of nature,
And master the devil, or throw him out
With wondrous potency.] Once more, good night :
And when you are desirous to be bless'd,
I'll blessing beg of you. For this same lord,
[Pointing to POLONIUS.
I do repent. But heaven hath pleas'd it so,—
To punish me with this, and this with me,
That I must be their scourge and minister.
I will bestow him, and will answer well
The death I gave him. So again, good night!
I must be cruel, only to be kind:

Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.— [One word more, good lady.]

What shall I do?

Queen.
Ham. Not this, by no means, that I bid you do :
Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed;
Pinch wanton on your cheek; call you his mouse ;
And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses,

Or padling in your neck with his damn'd fingers,
Make you to ravel all this matter out,
That I essentially am not in madness,
But mad in craft. 'T were good you let him
know:

For who, that's but a queen, fair, sober, wise,
Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib,
Such dear concernings hide? who would do so?
No, in despite of sense, and secrecy,
Unpeg the basket on the house's top,
Let the birds fly; and, like the famous ape,
To try conclusions, in the basket creep,
And break your own neck down.

Queen. Be thou assur'd, if words be made of

breath,

And breath of life, I have no life to breathe What thou hast said to me.

Ham. I must to England; you know that?

This passage is generally printed thus:

"That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat Of habit's devil, is angel yet in this." The commentators, who have, contrary to the text of the quarto, made habits the genitive case, cannot explain their own reading. As we have printed the passage, we understand it to mean, that custom, who destroys all nicety of feeling-sense-sensibility,-who is the devil that governs our habits-is yet an angel in this, &c.

b The lines in brackets, and the four subsequent lines, are not in the folio, but are found in the quarto (B).

Master-so the quarto (C); it has been changed to either curb, either without curb being the reading of quarto (B). d I. as your son, will ask your blessing, when, by your altered life, you evince your desire to be bless'd. • Paddock-toad.

f Gib-a cat.

Queen.

Alack,

I had forgot; 't is so concluded on.
Ham. [There's letters seal'd: and my two
schoolfellows,-

Whom I will trust, as I will adders fang'd,—
They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way,
And marshal me to knavery: Let it work,
For 't is the sport, to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petar:" and 't shall go hard,
But I will delve one yard below their mines,
And blow them at the moon: O, 't is most sweet,
Hoist with his own petar-blown up with his own engine.

When in one line two crafts directly meet."]
This man shall set me packing.

I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room :-
Mother, good night.-Indeed, this counsellor
Is now most still, most secret, and most grave,
Who was in life a foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you:
Good night, mother.

[Exeunt severally; HAMLET dragging
in the body of POLONIUS.

a These lines in brackets are not in the folio.

1 SCENE II.-" I'll have a suit of sables."

Sir Thomas Hanmer turned "I'll have a suit of sables," into "I'll have a suit of ermine;" and Warburton thinks it extremely absurd that Hamlet and the devil should both go into mourning. Neither Hanmer nor Warburton perceived the latent irony of Hamlet's reply. Ophelia says his father has been dead "twice two months;" he "So long? nay, then let the devil wear replies, black, for I'll have a suit of gables." Robes of sable were amongst the most costly articles of dress; and by the Statute of Apparel, 24 Hen. VIII., it was ordained that none under the degree of an earl should use sables. This fur, as is well known, is not black; and it is difficult to know how it became connected with mournful associations, as in Spenser

"Grief all in sable sorrowfully clad."

In heraldry, sable means black; and, according to Peacham, the name thus used is derived from the fur. Sables, then, were costly and magnificent; but not essentially the habiliments of sorrow, though they had some slight association with mournful ideas. If Hamlet had said, "Nay, let the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of ermine," he would merely have said, Let the devil be in mourning, for I'll be fine. But as it is he says, Let the devil wear the real colours of grief, but I'll be magnificent in a garb that only has a facing of something like grief. Hamlet would wear the suit as Ben Jonson's haberdasher wore it: "Would you not laugh to meet a great counsellor of state, in a flat cap, with his trunk-hose, and a hobby-horse cloak; and yond haberdasher in a velvet gown trimmed with sables?"

as

2 SCENE II. "The dumb show enters."

Hamlet has previously described the bad player "capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows." Mute exhibitions, during the time of Shakspere, and before and after, were often introduced to exhibit such circumstances as the limits of a play would not admit to be represented. In some plays the order of these dumb shows is minutely described; and they generally represent scenes which are not offered to the understanding in the dialogue. We presume, however, that Shakspere, in the instance before us, had some stage authority for making the dumb show represent the same action that is indicated in the dialogue. His dramatic object here is evident: he wanted completely to catch the conscience of the king; and thus, before the actors come to the murder of Gonzago, the king is alarmed, and asks, "Have you heard the argument? is there no offence in it?"

3 SCENE II. "A fellowship in a cry of players," &c.

A cry of players was a company; a fellowship was a participation in the profits. Hamlet had managed the play so well, that his skill ought to entitle him to such a fellowship:-"Half a share," says Horatio; "a whole one," says Hamlet. In

Mr. Collier's History of the Stage, vol. iii. p. 427 we find many curious details on the payment of actors, showing that the performers at our earlier theatres were divided into whole-sharers, threequarter-sharers, half-sharers, and hired men.

4 SCENE IV. "Look here, upon this picture, and on this."

In a volume of Essays, written by Dr. Armstrong, under the assumed name of Lancelot Temple, we have the following observations on the common stage action which accompanies this passage,"As I feel it, there is a kind of tame impropriety, or even absurdity, in that action of Hamlet producing the two miniatures of his father and uncle out of his pocket. It seems more natural to suppose, that Hamlet was struck with the comparison he makes between the two brothers, upon casting his eyes on their pictures, as they hang up in the apartment where this conference passes with the queen. There is not only more nature, more elegance, and dignity in supposing it thus; but it gives occasion to more passionate and more graceful action; and is of consequence likelier to be as Shakspere's imagination had conceived it." It is remarkable that this stage practice, which involved the improbability that Hamlet should have carried his uncle's picture about with him, should have been a modern innovation. In a print prefixed to Rowe's Shakspere, 1709, of which the following is a copy, we see Hamlet pointing to the large pictures on the arras. Our readers will smile at the costume, and will observe that the stage trick of kicking down the chair upon the entrance of the ghost is more than a century old.

SCENE 1.-The same.

Enter KING and QUEEN."

King. There's matter in these sighs; these profound heaves;

You must translate: 't is fit we understand them : Where is your son?

Queen. Ah, my good lord, what have I seen to-night!

King. What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet? Queen. Mad as the seas, and wind, when both contend

Which is the mightier: In his lawless fit,
Behind the arras hearing something stir,
He whips his rapier out, and cries, A rat! a rat!b
And, in his brainish apprehension, kills

The unseen good old man.

King.

O heavy deed!

It had been so with us, had we been there :
His liberty is full of threats to all;

a In the quartos, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern enter with the King and Queen, and are sent away, for a short space, by this line of the Queen :

"Bestow this place on us a little while."

In the folio this line is omitted; and Rosencrantz and Guil denstern come in when Guildenstern is called by the King. b In the quartos,

"Whips out his rapier cries, A rat! a rat!"

To you yourself, to us, to every one.
Alas! how shall this bloody deed be answer'd?
It will be laid to us, whose providence
Should have kept short, restrain'd, and out of
haunt,

This mad young man: but, so much was our love,
We would not understand what was most fit;
But, like the owner of a foul disease,
To keep it from divulging, let it feed
Even on the pith of life. Where is he gone?

Queen. To draw apart the body he hath kill'd: O'er whom his very madness, like some ore, Among a mineral of metals base,

a

Shows itself pure; he weeps for what is done.
King. O, Gertrude, come away!

The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch,
But we will ship him hence: and this vile deed
We must, with all our majesty and skill,
Both countenance and excuse.-Ho! Guilden-
stern!

Enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.
Friends both, go join you with some further aid :
Hamlet in madness hath Polonius slain,
And from his mother's closet hath he dragg'd him:

a Mineral-mine; a compound mass of metals.

Go, seek him out; speak fair, and bring the body
Into the chapel. I pray you, haste in this.
[Exeunt Ros. and GUIL.
Come, Gertrude, we'll call up our wisest friends;
And let them know, both what we mean to do,
And what's untimely done: [so, haply, slander,
Whose whisper o'er the world's diameter,
As level as the cannon to his blank,
Transports his poison'd shot, may miss our name,
And hit the woundless air."] O come away!
My soul is full of discord, and dismay. [Exeunt.

SCENE II.-Another Room in the same.
Enter HAMLET.

Ham. Safely stowed,

[Ros. &c. within. Hamlet! lord Hamlet!] Ham. What noise? who calls on Hamlet? O, here they come.

Enter ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDenstern. Ros. What have you done, my lord, with the dead body?

Ham. Compounded it with dust, whereto 't is kin.

Ros. Tell us where 't is; that we may take it thence,

And bear it to the chapel.

Ham. Do not believe it.
Ros. Believe what?

Ham. That I can keep your counsel, and not mine own. Besides, to be demanded of a sponge! -what replication should be made by the son of a king?

Ros. Take you me for a sponge, my lord?

Ham. Ay, sir; that soaks up the king's countenance, his rewards, his authorities. But such officers do the king best service in the end: He keeps them, like an ape, in the corner of his jaw; first mouthed, to be last swallowed: When he needs what you have gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall be dry again.

Ros. I understand you not, my lord. Ham. I am glad of it: A knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.

Ros. My lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go with us to the king.

Ham. The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. The king is a thingGuil. A thing, my lord?

Ham. Of nothing: bring me to him. fox, and all after."

Hide [Exeunt.

a The lines in the brackets are not in the folio. In the quartos the sense is imperfect, and Theobald inserted; "so, haply, slander."

b Demanded of-demanded by.

The name of a boyish sport-"All hid."

SCENE III.-Another Room in the same.

Enter KING, attended.

King. I have sent to seek him, and to find the body. How dangerous is it that this man goes loose! Yet must not we put the strong law on him : He's lov'd of the distracted multitude, Who like not in their judgment, but their eyes; And, where 't is so, the offender's scourge is weigh'd, But never the offence. To bear all smooth and even, This sudden sending him away must seem Deliberate pause: Diseases, desperate grown, By desperate appliance are reliev'd, Enter ROSENCRANTZ.

Or not at all.-How now ? what hath befallen? Ros. Where the dead body is bestow'd, my lord, We cannot get from him.

King.

But where is he? Ros. Without, my lord; guarded, to know your pleasure.

King. Bring him before us.

Ros. Ho, Guildenstern! bring in my lord.
Enter HAMLET and GUILDENSTERN.
King. Now, Hamlet, where 's Polonius?
Ham. At supper.

King. At supper? Where?

Ham. Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet we fat all creatures else, to fat us; and we fat ourselves for maggots: Your fat king, and your lean beggar, is but variable service; two dishes, but to one table; that's the end. [King. Alas, alas!

Ham. A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king; and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm."]

King. What dost thou mean by this?

Ham. Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar. King. Where is Polonius ?

Ham. In heaven, send thither to see if your messenger find him not there, seek him i' the other place yourself. But, indeed, if you find him not this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.

King. Go seek him there. [To some Attendants. Ham. He will stay till you come.

Exeunt Attendants.

a The Corrector of the folio of 1632 substitutes palated for politic. Mr. Collier says the expression palated is peculiarly Shaksperian, and "if the text had always stood 'palated worms,' and it had been proposed to change it to politic worms,' few readers would for an instant have consented." The argument is a two-edged one; it makes us hesitate about disturbing an established text. If palated be a Shaksperian word, politic is a Shaksperian thought, and is manifestly connected with the idea of "convocation."

b The lines in brackets are not in the folio.

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