Enter HORATIO and MARCELLUS.

FRAN. I think, I hear them.-Stand, ho! Who is there!

HOR. Friends to this ground.
MAR.
FRAN. Give you good night.
MAR.
Who hath reliev'd you?

And liegemen to the Dane.

O, farewell, honeft foldier:

FRAN.

Give you good night.

MAR.

BER.

What, is Horatio there?

Bernardo hath my place. [Exit FRANCISCO. Bernardo !

Say.

Holla!

fined "One that fueth for the fame thing with another;" and
hence Shakspeare, with his ufual licence, always ufes it in the
fame fenfe of one engaged in the fame employment or office with
another. Competitor, which is explained by Bullokar by the
very fame words which he has employed in the definition of
rival, is in like manner (as Mr. M. Mafon has obferved,) always
ufed by Shakspeare for affociate. See Vol. IV. p. 233, n. 6.
Mr. Warner would read and point thus:

If you do meet Horatio, and Marcellus
The rival of my watch,

because Horatio is a gentleman of no profeffion, and because, as he conceived, there was but one perfon on each watch. But there is no need of change. Horatio is certainly not an officer, but Hamlet's fellow-ftudent at Wittenberg: but as he accompanied Marcellus and Bernardo on the watch from a motive of curiofity, our poet confiders him very properly as an affociate with them. Horatio himself fays to Hamlet in a fubfequent fcene

"6

This to me

"In dreadful fecrecy impart they did,

" And 1 with them the third night kept the watch."

MALONE,

HOR.

A piece of him."

BER. Welcome, Horatio; welcome, good Mar. cellus.

HOR. What," has this thing appear'd again to night?

BER. I have feen nothing.

MAR. Horatio fays, 'tis but our fantafy;
And will not let belief take hold of him,
Touching this dreaded fight, twice feen of us:
Therefore I have entreated him along,
With us to watch the minutes of this night;
That, if again this apparition come,
He may approve our eyes, and speak to it.

Hor. A piece of him,] But why a piece? He fays this as he gives his hand. Which direction fhould be marked.

WARBURTON,

A piece of him, is, I believe, no more than a cant expression, It is used, however, on a serious occafion in Pericles :

"Take in your arms this piece of your dead queen." STEEVENS,

1 Hor. What, &c.] Thus the quarto, 1604. STEEVENS. These words are in the folio given to Marcellus. MALONE. the minutes of this night;] This seems to have been an expreffion common in Shakspeare's time. I found it in one of Ford's plays, The Fancies chafle and noble, A& V: "I promise ere the minutes of the night."

8

STEEVENS. ·approve our eyes,] Add a new teftimony to that of our

eyes. JOHNSON.

So, in King Lear:

"6

this approves her letter, "That fhe would foon be here." Se Vol. XVII. p. 12, n. 4.

STEEVENS.

He may approve our eyes,] He may make good the teftimony of our eyes; be affured by his own experience of the truth of that which we have related, in confequence of having been eyewitnefes to it. To approve in Shakspeare's age, fignified to

HOR. Tufh! tufh! 'twill not appear.
BER.
And let us once again affail your ears,
That are fo fortified againft our ftory,
What we two nights have seen.'

HOR. Well, fit we down, And let us hear Bernardo fpeak of this.

BER. Laft night of all,

When yon fame ftar, that's weftward from the pole,
Had made his courfe to illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns, Marcellus, and myself,
The bell then beating one,-

MAR. Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again!

Enter Ghoft.

Sit down awhile;

BER. In the fame figure, like the king that's dead.

MAR. Thou art a fcholar, fpeak to it, Horatio.*

make good, or establish, and is fo defined in Cawdrey's Alphabetical Table of hard English Words, 8vo. 1604. So, in King Lear:

"Good king that must approve the common faw!
"Thou out of heaven's benediction com'ft
"To the warm fun." MALONE.

I What we two nights have feen.] This line is by Sir Thomas Hanmer given to Marcellus, but without neceflity. JOHNSON.

2 Thou art a fcholar, speak to it, Horatio.] It has always been a vulgar notion that spirits and fupernatural beings can only be spoken to with propriety or effect by perfons of learning. Thus, Toby, in The Night-walker, by Beaumont and Fletcher, says:

It grows ftill longer,

""Tis fteeple-high now; and it fails away, nurse.
"Let's call the butler up, for he speaks Latin,
"And that will daunt the devil."

f..

BER. Looks it not like the king? mark it, Ho

ratio.

HOR. Moft like:-it harrows me with fear, and wonder.

BER. It would be spoke to.

MAR.

Speak to it, Horatio. HOR. What art thou, that ufurp'ft this time of night,

Together with that fair and warlike form
In which the majesty of buried Denmark
Did fometimes march? by heaven I charge thee,
fpeak.

MAR. It is offended.

BER.

See! it fialks away.

HOR. Stay; fpeak: fpeak I charge thee, fpeak. [Exit Ghoft,

MAR. "Tis gone, and will not answer.

BER. How now, Horatio? you tremble, and look pale:

Is not this fomething more than fantasy?
What think you of it?

HOR. Before my God, I might not this believe, Without the fenfible and true avouch

Of mine own eyes.

In like manner the honeft Butler in Mr. Addifon's Drummer, recommends the Steward to speak Latin to the Ghost in that play.

REED.:

3 it harrows me &c.] To harrow is to conquer, to subdue. The word is of Saxon origin. So, in the old black letter romance of Syr Eglamoure of Artoys:

"He swore by him that harrowed hell.' Milton has adopted this phrafe in his Comus:

"Amaz'd I ftood, harrow'd with grief and fear."

STEEVENS.

MAR.

Is it not like the king?

HOR. As thou art to thyself:
Such was the very armour he had on,
When he the ambitious Norway combated;
So frown'd he once, when, in an angry parle,4
He fmote the fledded 5 Polack on the ice."
'Tis strange.

an angry parle,] This is one of the affected words introduced by Lyly. So, in The Two wife Men and all the rest Fools, 1619:

66

that you told me at our laft parle." STEEVENS. 5-Aedded-] A fled, or fledge, is a carriage without wheels, made use of in the cold countries. So, in Tamburlaine, or the Scythian Shepherd, 1590:

upon an ivory Лed

"Thou shalt be drawn among the frozen poles."

STEEVENS,

He fmote the fedded Polack on the ice.] Pole-ax in the common editions. He fpeaks of a Prince of Poland whom he flew in battle. He uses the word Polack again, A& II. fc. iv.

POPE.

Polack was, in that age, the term for an inhabitant of Poland: Polaque, French. As in F. Davifon's tranflation of Pafferatius's epitaph on Henry III. of France, published by Camden:

"Whether thy chance or choice thee hither brings,
"Stay, paffenger, and wail the hap of kings.
"This little ftone a great king's heart doth hold,
"Who rul'd the fickle French and Polacks bold:
"Whom, with a mighty warlike host attended,
"With trait'rous knife a cowled monfter ended.
"So frail are even the highest earthly things!
"Go, paffenger, and wail the hap of kings."

JOHNSON. Again, in The White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona, &c. 1612;

I fcorn him

"Like a fhav'd Polack-." STEEVENS.

All the old copies have Polax. Mr. Pope and the subsequent editors read-Polack; but the corrupted word fhows, I think, that Shakspeare wrote-Polacks. MALONE.

With Polack for Polander, the transcriber, or printer, might