On Mars's armor, forged for proof eterne, Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods, 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.'Pr'ythee, say on.-He's for a jig,' or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps.-Say on: come to Hecuba. 1 Play. But who, ah, woe! had seen the mobled 2 queen Ham. The mobled queen? Pol. That's good; mobled queen is good. 1 Play. Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head, 1 Giga, in Italian, was a fiddle, or crowd; gigaro, a fiddler, or minstrel. Hence a jig (first written gigge, though pronounced with a g soft, after the Italian) was a ballad, or ditty, sung to the fiddle. There are several of the old ballads and dialogues called jigs in the Harleian Collection. 2 The folio reads inobled, an evident error of the press, for mobled, which means muffled. 3 Bisson is blind. Bisson rheum, therefore, is blinding tears. 4 i. e. mild, tender-hearted.-TODD.-By a hardy poetical license, this expression means, "Would have filled with tears the burning eye of heaven." To have "made passion in the gods" would have been to move them to compassion. Pol. Look, whether he has not turned his color, and has tears in's eyes.-'Prythee, no more. Ham. 'Tis well; I'll have thee speak out the rest of this soon.-Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for they are the abstract, and brief chronicles, of the time. After your death you were better have a bad epitaph, than their ill report while you live. Pol. My lord, I will use them according to their desert. Use Ham. Odd's bodikin, man, much better. every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping? Use them after your own honor and dignity; the less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in. Pol. Come, sirs. [Exit POLONIUS, with some of the Players. Ham. Follow him, friends; we'll hear a play tomorrow. Dost thou hear me, old friend; can you play the murder of Gonzago? 1 Play. Ay, my lord. Ham. We'll have it to-morrow night. You could, for a need, study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which I would set down, and insert in't? could you not? 1 Play. Ay, my lord. Ham. Very well.-Follow that lord; and look you mock him not. [Exit Player.]—My good friends, [To Ros. and GUIL.] I'll leave you till night; you are welcome to Elsinore. Ros. Good my lord! [Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILdenstern. Ham. Ay, so, good bye to you ;-now I am alone. O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! Is it not monstrous, that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit, That from her working, all his visage wanned;1 1 The folio reads warmed, which reading Steevens contended for; but surely no one can doubt, who considers the context, that wanned is the Poet's word. Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspéct, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her? What would he do, That I have? He would drown the stage with tears, And cleave the general ear with horrid speech; Yet I, A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak, 3 A damned defeat was made. Am I a coward? As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this? Why, I should take it; for it cannot be, 1 i. e. the hint or prompt word; the word or sign given by the prompter for a player to enter on his part. 2 John-a-dreams, or John-a-droynes, was a common term for any dreaming or droning simpleton. Unpregnant is not quickened or properly impressed with. 3 Defeat here signifies destruction. It was frequently used in the sense of undo or take away by our old writers. 4 Kindless is unnatural. That I, the son of a dear father murdered,1 Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, A scullion! Fie upon't! foh! About my brains! 2 Humph! I have heard, "That guilty creatures, sitting at a play,3 Before mine uncle; I'll observe his looks; 4 I'll tent him to the quick; if he do blench,5 I'll have grounds More relative than this. 1 The first folio reads thus: "Oh vengeance! Who? What an ass am I! I sure this is most brave, The quarto of 1604 omits "Oh vengeance," and reads, "a deere mur thered;" the quarto of 1603, "that I the son of my dear father." 2 "About my brains" is nothing more than "to work, my brains." Steevens quotes the following from Heywood's Iron Age: - 3 A number of instances of the kind are collected by Thomas Heywood in his Apology for Actors. 4 To tent was to probe, to search a wound. 5 To blench is to shrink or start. Vide Winter's Tale, Act i. Sc. 2. 6 i. e. more near, more immediately connected. The first quarto reads, "I will have sounder proofs." ACT III. SCENE I. A Room in the Castle. Enter King, Queen, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSEN- King. And can you, by no drift of conference,' Ros. He does confess, he feels himself distracted; But from what cause he will by no means speak. Guil. Nor do we find him forward to be sounded But, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof, When we would bring him on to some confession Of his true state. Queen. Did he receive you well? Ros. Most like a gentleman. Guil. But with much forcing of his disposition. Ros. Niggard of question; but, of our demands, Most free in his reply.2 Queen. To any pastime? Did you assay him Ros. Madam, it so fell out, that certain players 3 We o'er-raught on the way. Of these we told him; To hear of it. They are about the court; Pol. 'Tis most true; And he beseeched me to entreat your majesties, To hear and see the matter. King. With all my heart; and it doth much content me 1 Folio-circumstance. 2❝Slow to begin conversation, but free enough in answering our demands." 3 i. e. reached, overtook. |