The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark Part 24

growne honest.

_Ham_. Then is Doomesday neere: But your

[Footnote A: _In the Quarto, the speech ends thus_:--I will leaue him and my daughter.[6] My Lord, I will take my leaue of you.]

[Footnote 1: From 'And sodainely' _to_ 'betweene him,' _not in Quarto_.]

[Footnote 2: It is well here to recall the modes of the word _leave_: '_Give me leave_,' Polonius says with proper politeness to the king and queen when he wants _them_ to go--that is, 'Grant me your _departure_'; but he would, going himself, _take_ his leave, his departure, _of_ or _from_ them--by their permission to go. Hamlet means, 'You cannot take from me anything I will more willingly part with than your leave, or, my permission to you to go.' 85, 203. See the play on the two meanings of the word in _Twelfth Night_, act ii. sc. 4:

_Duke_. Give me now leave to leave thee;

though I suspect it ought to be--

_Duke_. Give me now leave.

_Clown_. To leave thee!--Now, the melancholy &c.]

[Footnote 3: It is a relief to him to speak the truth under the cloak of madness--ravingly. He has no one to whom to open his heart: what lies there he feels too terrible for even the eye of Horatio. He has not apparently told him as yet more than the tale of his father's murder.]

[Footnote 4: _Above, in Quarto_.]

[Footnote 5: In this and all like utterances of Hamlet, we see what worm it is that lies gnawing at his heart.]

[Footnote 6: This is a slip in the _Quarto_--rectified in the _Folio_: his daughter was not present.]

[Page 90]

newes is not true.[1] [2] Let me question more in particular: what haue you my good friends, deserued at the hands of Fortune, that she sends you to Prison hither?

_Guil_. Prison, my Lord?

_Ham_. Denmark's a Prison.

_Rosin_. Then is the World one.

_Ham_. A goodly one, in which there are many Confines, Wards, and Dungeons; _Denmarke_ being one o'th'worst.

_Rosin_. We thinke not so my Lord.

_Ham_. Why then 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so[3]: to me it is a prison.

_Rosin_. Why then your Ambition makes it one: 'tis too narrow for your minde.[4]

_Ham_. O G.o.d, I could be bounded in a nutsh.e.l.l, and count my selfe a King of infinite s.p.a.ce; were it not that I haue bad dreames.

_Guil_. Which dreames indeed are Ambition: for the very substance[5] of the Ambitious, is meerely the shadow of a Dreame.

_Ham_. A dreame it selfe is but a shadow.

_Rosin_. Truely, and I hold Ambition of so ayry and light a quality, that it is but a shadowes shadow.

_Ham_. Then are our Beggers bodies; and our Monarchs and out-stretcht Heroes the Beggers Shadowes: shall wee to th'Court: for, by my fey[6]

I cannot reason?[7]

_Both_. Wee'l wait vpon you.

_Ham_. No such matter.[8] I will not sort you with the rest of my seruants: for to speake to you like an honest man: I am most dreadfully attended;[9]

but in the beaten way of friendship,[10] [Sidenote: But in]

What make you at _Elsonower_?

[Footnote 1: 'it is not true that the world is grown honest': he doubts themselves. His eye is sharper because his heart is sorer since he left Wittenberg. He proceeds to examine them.]

[Footnote 2: This pa.s.sage, beginning with 'Let me question,' and ending with 'dreadfully attended,' is not in the _Quarto_.

Who inserted in the Folio this and other pa.s.sages? Was it or was it not Shakspere? Beyond a doubt they are Shakspere's all. Then who omitted those omitted? Was Shakspere incapable of refusing any of his own work?

Or would these editors, who profess to have all opportunity, and who, belonging to the theatre, must have had the best of opportunities, have desired or dared to omit what far more painstaking editors have since presumed, though out of reverence, to restore?]

[Footnote 3: 'but it is thinking that makes it so:']

[Footnote 4: --feeling after the cause of Hamlet's strangeness, and following the readiest suggestion, that of chagrin at missing the succession.]

[Footnote 5: objects and aims.]

[Footnote 6: _foi_.]

[Footnote 7: Does he choose beggars as the representatives of substance because they lack ambition--that being shadow? Or does he take them as the shadows of humanity, that, following Rosincrance, he may get their shadows, the shadows therefore of shadows, to parallel _monarchs_ and _heroes_? But he is not satisfied with his own a.n.a.logue--therefore will to the court, where good logic is not wanted--where indeed he knows a h.e.l.lish lack of reason.]

[Footnote 8: 'On no account.']

[Footnote 9: 'I have very bad servants.' Perhaps he judges his servants spies upon him. Or might he mean that he was _haunted with bad thoughts_? Or again, is it a stroke of his pretence of madness--suggesting imaginary followers?]

[Footnote: 10: 'to speak plainly, as old friends.']

[Page 92]

_Rosin_. To visit you my Lord, no other occasion.

_Ham_. Begger that I am, I am euen poore in [Sidenote: am ever poore]

thankes; but I thanke you: and sure deare friends my thanks are too deare a halfepeny[1]; were you [Sidenote: 72] not sent for? Is it your owne inclining? Is it a free visitation?[2] Come, deale iustly with me: come, come; nay speake. [Sidenote: come, come,]

_Guil_. What should we say my Lord?[3]

_Ham_. Why any thing. But to the purpose; [Sidenote: Any thing but to'th purpose:]

you were sent for; and there is a kinde confession [Sidenote: kind of confession]

in your lookes; which your modesties haue not craft enough to color, I know the good King and [Sidenote: 72] Queene haue sent for you.

_Rosin_. To what end my Lord?