Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies

III.ii.68 (244,1) my dear soul] Perhaps, my clear soul.

III.ii.74 (244,2) Whose blood and judgment] According to the doctrine of the four humours, desire and confidence were seated in the blood, and judgment in the phlegm, and the due mixture of the humours made a perfect character.

III.ii.89 (244,3) Vulcan's stithy] Stithy is a smith's anvil.

III.ii.103 (245,4) nor mine now] A man's words, says the proverb, are his own no longer than he keep them unspoken.

III.ii.112 (245,5) they stay upon your patience] May it not be read more intelligibly, They stay upon your pleasure. In Macbeth it is, "Noble Macbeth, we stay upon your leisure."

III.ii.123 (245,6) Do you think I meant country matters?] I think we must read, Do you think I meant country manners? Do you imagine that I meant to sit in your lap, with such rough gallantry as clowns use to their lasses?

III.ii.137 (246,7) Nay, then, let the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of sables] I know not why our editors should, with such implacable anger, persecute our predecessors. The dead, it is true, can make no resistance, they may be attacked with great security; but since they can neither feel nor mend, the safety of mauling them seems greater than the pleasure; nor perhaps would it much misbeseem us to remember, amidst our triumphs over the nonsensical and the senseless, that we likewise are men; that debemur morti, and, as Swift observed to Burnet, shall soon be among the dead ourselves.

I cannot find how the common reading is nonsense, nor why Hamlet, when he laid aside his dress of mourning, in a country where it was bitter cold, and the air was nipping and eager, should not have a suit of sables. I suppose it is well enough known, that the fur of sables is not black.

III.ii.147 (249,1) Marry, this is miching maliche; it means mischief] [W: malhechor] I think Hanmer's exposition most likely to be right. Dr. Warburton, to justify his interpretation, must write, miching for malechor, and even then it will be harsh.

III.ii.167 (250,3) sheen] Splendor, lustre.

III.ii.177 (250,4) For women fear too much, even as they love] Here seems to be a line lost, which should have rhymed to love.

III.ii.192 (251,6) The instances, that second marriage move] The motives.

III.ii.202 (252,7)

Most necessary 'tis, that we forget
To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt]

The performance of a resolution, in which only the resolver is interested, is a debt only to himself, which he may therefore remit at pleasure.

III.ii.206 (252,8)

The violence of either grief or joy,
Their own enactures with themselves destroy]

What grief or joy enact or determine in their violence, is revealed in their abatement. Enactures is the word in the quarto; all the modern editions have enactors.

III.ii.229 (252,9) An anchor's cheer in prison be my scope] May my whole liberty and enjoyment be to live on hermit's fare in a prison. Anchor is for anchoret.

III.ii.250 (253,1) Baptista] Baptista is, I think, in Italian, the name always of a man.

III.ii.262 (254,4) So you must take your husbands] Read, So you must take your husbands [in place of "mistake"]; that is, for better, for worse.

III.ii.288 (255,5) with two provencial roses on my rayed shoes] When shoe-strings were worn, they were covered, where they met in the middle, by a ribband, gathered into the form of a rose. So in an old song,

Gil-de-Roy was a bonny boy,
Had roses tull his shoen.

Rayed shoes, are shoes braided in lines.

III.ii.304 (256,1) For if the king like not the comedy/Why, then, belike] Hamlet was going on to draw the consequence when the courtiers entered.

III.ii.314 (256,2) With drink, Sir?] Hamlet takes particular care that his uncle's love of drink shall not be forgotten.

III.ii.346 (257,3) further trade] Further business; further dealing.

III.ii.348 (257,4) by these pickers] By these hands.

III.ii.373 (258,6) ventages] The holes of a flute.

III.ii.401 (259,9) they fool me to the top of my bent] They compel me to play the fool, till I can endure to do it no longer.

III.iii.7 (261,4) Out of his lunes] [The old quartos read,

Out of his brows.

This was from the ignorance of the first editors; as is this unnecessary Alexandrine, which we owe to the players. The poet, I am persuaded, wrote,

—us doth hourly grow
out of his lunes.

i.e. his madness, frenzy. THEOBALD.]

Lunacies is the reading of the folio.

I take brows to be, properly read, frows, which, I think, is a provincial word for perverse humours; which being, I suppose, not understood, was changed to lunacies. But of this I an not confident. [Steevens adopted Theobald's emendation]

III.iii.33 (262,7) of vantage] By some opportunity of secret observation.

III.iii.56 (263,9) May one be pardon'd, and retain the offence?] He that does not amend what can be amended, retains his offence. The king kept the crown from the right heir.

III.iii.66 (263,1) Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?] What can repentance do for a man that cannot be penitent, for a man who has only part of penitence, distress of conscience, without the other part, resolution of amendment.

III.iii.77 (264,1) I, his sole son, do this same villain send] The folio reads foule son, a reading apparently corrupted from the quarto. The meaning is plain. I, his only son, who am bound to punish his murderer.

III.iii.88 (264,2) Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent] [T: bent] This reading is followed by Sir T. HANMER and Dr. WARBURTON; but hent is probably the right vord. To hent is used by Shakespeare for, to seize, to catch, to lay hold on. Hent is, therefore, hold, or seizure. Lay hold on him, sword, at a more horrid time.

III.iii.94 (265,3) his soul may be as damn'd and black/As hell, whereto it goes] This speech, in which Hamlet, represented as a virtuous character, is not content vith taking blood for blood, but contrives damnation for the man that he would punish, is too horrible to be read or to be uttered.

III.iv.4 (266,4) I'll silence me e'en here:/Pray you, be round vith him] Sir T. HANMER, who is folloved by Dr. WARBURTON, reads,

—I'll sconce me here.

Retire to a place of security. They forget that the contrivance of Polonius to overhear the conference, was no more told to the queen than to Hamlet.—I'll silence me even here, is, I'll use no more words.

III.iv.48 (268,8)

Heaven's face doth glow;
Yea, this solidity and compound mass,