Ham. Why, 'One fair daughter, and no more, The which he loved passing well.' Pol. [Aside] Still on my daughter. Ham. Nay, that follows not. Pol. What follows, then, my lord? Ham. Why, 'It came to pass, as most like it was,' the first row of the pious chanson will show comes. Enter four or five Players. You are welcome, masters; welcome, all. I 440 450 440. These lines are from an old ballad, entitled "Jephtha, Judge of Israel." It was first printed in Percy's Reliques, having been "retrieved from utter oblivion by a lady, who wrote it down from memory, as she had formerly heard it sung by her father." A more correct copy has since been discovered, and reprinted in Evans' Old Ballads, 1810; where the first stanza runs thus: "I have read that many years agoe, When Jephtha, judge of Israel, As by lot, God wot, It came to passe, most like it was, Great warrs there should be, And who should be the chiefe but he, but he." --H. N. H. friends. O, my old friend! Why thy face 470 First Play. What speech, my good lord? Ham. I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was never acted; or, if it was, not above once; for the play, I remember, pleased not the million; 'twas caviare to the general: but it was as I received it, and others, whose judgments in such matters cried in the top of mine an excellent play, well digested in the scenes, set down with as much modesty as cunning. I remember, one said there were no sallets in the lines to make the matter sav- 480 ory, nor no matter in the phrase that might indict the author of affection; but called it an honest method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine. One speech in it I chiefly loved: 'twas Æneas' tale to Dido; and thereabout of it 466. "French falconers"; so the folio and the first quarto; the other quartos have friendly instead of French.-H. N. H. 486. "Eneas' tale to Dido"; one cannot but believe that Hamlet's especially, where he speaks of Priam's "The rugged Pyrrhus, like th' Hyrcanian It is not so: it begins with 'Pyrrhus.' "The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms, 490 criticism of the play is throughout ironical, and that the speeches quoted are burlesque. "The fancy that a burlesque was intended," wrote Coleridge, "sinks below criticism; the lines, as epic narrative, are superb"; perhaps he would have changed his mind, and would have recognized them as mere parody, if he had read Dido, Queen of Carthage, a play left incomplete by Marlowe and finished by Nash (cp. e. g. Act II. Sc. i., which seems to be the very passage Shakespeare had in view).-I. G. 492. “The rugged Pyrrhus"; Schlegel observes, that "this speech must not be judged by itself, but in connexion with the place where it is introduced. To distinguish it as dramatic poetry in the play itself, it was necessary that it should rise above the dignified poetry of that in the same proportion that the theatrical elevation does above simple nature. Hence Shakespeare has composed the play in Hamlet altogether in sententious rhymes, full of antithesis. But this solemn and measured tone did not suit a speech in which violent emotion ought to prevail; and the Poet had no other expedient than the one of which he made use, overcharging the pathos.”— H. N. H. To the remarks of Schlegel on this speech should be added those of Coleridge, as the two appear to have been a coincidence of thought, and not a borrowing either way: "This admirable substitution of the epic for the dramatic, giving such reality to the dramatic diction of Shakespeare's own dialogue, and authorized, too, by the actual style of the tragedies before his time, is well worthy of notice. The fancy, that a burlesque was intended, sinks below criticism: the lines, as epic narrative, are superb.-In the thoughts, and even in the separate parts of the diction, this description is highly poetical: in truth, taken by itself, that is its fault, that it is too poetical!-the language of lyric vehemence and epic pomp, and not of the drama. But if Shakespeare had made the diction truly dramatic, where would have been the contrast between Hamlet and the play in Hamlet?"-H. N. H. Hath now this dread and black complexion smear'd With heraldry more dismal: head to foot Now is he total gules; horridly trick'd With the blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, Baked and impasted with the parching streets And thus o'er-sized with coagulate gore, With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus So, proceed you. Pol. 'Fore God, my lord, well spoken, with good accent and good discretion. First Play. 'Anon he finds him Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top Of reverend Priam, seem'd i' the air to stick: So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood, And like a neutral to his will and matter, 520 But as we often see, against some storm, A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still, In general synod take away her power, 531 Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel, And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven As low as to the fiends!' Pol. This is too long. Ham. It shall to the barber's, with your beard. Prithee, say on: he's for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps: say on: come to 540 Hecuba. First Play. 'But who, O, who had seen the mobled queen-' Ham. "The mobled queen?' Pol. That's good; 'mobled queen' is good. First Play. Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head |