Th' imperial jointress of this warlike state,
Have we, as 'twere, with a defeated joy,—
With one auspicious, and one dropping eye;'
With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole, -
Taken to wife nor have we herein barr'd
Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone
With this affair along: For all, our thanks.
Now follows, that you know, young Fortinbras,
Holding a weak supposal of our worth,
Or thinking, by our late dear brother's death,
Our state to be disjoint and out of frame,
Colleagued with this dream of his advantage,
He hath not fail'd to pester us with message,
Importing the surrender of those lands
Lost by his father, with all bonds of law,
To our most valiant brother. - So much for him.
Now for ourself, and for this time of meeting.
Thus much the business is: We have here writ
To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras,—
Who, impotent and bed-rid, scarcely hears
Of this his nephew's purpose, to suppress
His further gait herein; in that the levies,
The lists, and full proportions, are all made
Out of his subject. And we here despatch
You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltimand,
For bearers of this greeting to old Norway;
Giving to you no further personal power

To business with the king, more than the scope

The same thought occurs in The Winter's Tale: "She had one eye declin'd for the loss of her husband, another elevated that the oracle was fulfill'd." There is an old proverbial phrase, "To

laugh with one eye, and cry with the other."

2 Gait here signifies course, progress. Gait for road, way

path, is still in use. - · Subject, next line but one, is used for sub jects, or those subject to him.

H.

Of these dilated articles allow."

Farewell; and let your haste commend your duty. Cor. Vol. In that, and all things, will we show

our duty.

King. We doubt it nothing: heartily farewell.–
[Exeunt VOLTIMAND and CORNELIUS.

And now, Laertes, what's the news with you?
You told us of some suit: what is't, Laertes ?
You cannot speak of reason to the Dane,

And lose your voice: What would'st thou beg,
Laertes,

That shall not be my offer, not thy asking?

The head is not more native to the heart,

The hand more instrumental to the mouth,
Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father.*
What would'st thou have, Laertes ?

Laer.

My dread lord, Your leave and favour to return to France; From whence though willingly I came to Denmark, To show my duty in your coronation;

Yet now, I must confess, that duty done,

My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France, And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon. King. Have you your father's leave? What says Polonius?

That is, the scope of these articles when dilated or explained in full. Such elliptical expressions are common with the Poet, from his having more thought than space. The rules of modern grammar would require allows instead of allow; but in old writers, when the noun and the verb have a genitive intervening, nothing is more common than for the verb to take the number of the gen. itive. In the king's speech," says Coleridge, observe the set and pedantically antithetic form of the sentences when touching that which galled the heels of conscience, -the strain of undignified rhetoric; and yet in what follows concerning the public weal, a certain appropriate majesty."

H.

The various parts of the body enumerated are not more allied, more necessary to each other, than the king of Denmark is bound to your father to do him service

Pol. He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow

leave,

By laboursome petition; and, at last,

Upon his will I seal'd my hard consent:

I do beseech you, give him leave to go."

King. Take thy fair hour, Laertes; time be thine. And thy best graces spend it at thy will." But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son,

Ham. [Aside.] A little more than kin, and less than kind.'

King. How is it that the clouds still hang on you? Ham. Not so, my lord; I am too much i'the sun. Queen. Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off, And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark. Do not, for ever, with thy vailed lids'

The first three lines of this speech, all but "He hath, my lord," are wanting in the folio.

H.

6 The king's speech may be thus explained: "Take an auspi cious hour, Laertes; be your time your own, and thy best virtnes guide thee in spending of it at thy will." Johnson thought that we should read, "And my best graces." The editors had rendered this passage obscure by placing a colon at graces.

66

A little more than kin has been rightly said to allude to the double relationship of the king to Hamlet, as uncle and step-father, his kindred by blood and kindred by marriage. By less than kind Hamlet means degenerate and base. Going out of kinde," says Baret," which goeth out of kinde, which dothe or worketh dishonour to his kinred. Degener; forlignant." « Forligner," says Cotgrave, to degenerate, to grow out of kind, to differ in conIditions with his ancestors." That less than kind and out of kind have the same meaning who can doubt?

This is commonly thought to be a sarcastic play upon the words sun and son; as the being called son by his uncle naturally reminds Hamlet of his mother's incest. Perhaps, however, the true meaning is best explained by the following, from Grindal's Profitable Discourse, 1555: "In very deed they were brought from the good to the bad, and from God's blessing, as the proverbe is, into a warme sonne." See King Lear, Act ii. sc. 2, note 27. —. In the next line, the folio has nightly instead of nighted. That is, with downcast eyes. to vail was to lower or let fall. Acti sc. 1, note 3.

H.

We have repeatedly seen, that
See The Merchant of Venice

H.

Seek for thy noble father in the dust:

Thou know'st 'tis common; all that live must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.

Ham. Ay, madam, it is common.10
Queen.

Why seems it so particular with thee?

If it be,

Ham. Seems, madam! nay, it is; I know not

seems.

"Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,

Nor customary suits of solemn black,

Nor windy suspiration of forc'd breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected haviour of the visage,
Together with all forms, modes, shows of grief,
That can denote me truly: these, indeed, seem,
For they are actions that a man might play;
But I have that within, which passeth show;
These, but the trappings and the suits of woe.
King. "Tis sweet and commendable in your na-
ture, Hamlet,

To give these mourning duties to your father:
But, you must know, your father lost a father;
That father lost, lost his; and the survivor bound
In filial obligation, for some term,
To do obsequious sorrow."

But to persever

10 Here observe Hamlet's delicacy to his mother, and how the suppression prepares him for the overflow in the next speech, in which his character is more developed by bringing forward his aversion to externals, and which betrays his habit of brooding over the world within him, coupled with a prodigality of beautiful words, which are the half-embodyings of thought, and are more than thought, and have an outness, a reality sui generis, and yet retain their correspondence and shadowy affinity to the images and movements within. Note, also, Hamlet's silence to the long speech of the King, which follows, and his respectful, but general, answer to his mother.-COLERIDGE.

H.

11 The Poet sometimes uses obsequious as having the sense of obsequies. So in his 31st Sonnet:

1

In obstinate condolement, is a course

12

Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief:
It shows a will most incorrect to Heaven;
A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,
An understanding simple and unschool'd:
For what, we know, must be, and is as common
As any the most vulgar thing to sense,
Why should we, in our peevish opposition,
Take it to heart? Fie! 'tis a fault to Heaven,
A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
To reason most absurd; whose common theme
Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,
From the first corse till he that died to-day,
"This must be so." We pray you, throw to earth
This unprevailing woe,13 and think of us

As of a father; for, let the world take note,
You are the most immediate to our throne;

And, with no less nobility of love

Than that which dearest father bears his son,

14

Do I impart toward you.

For your intent
In going back to school in Wittenberg,
It is most retrograde to our desire;

And, we beseech you, bend you to remain
Here, in the cheer and comfort of our eye,
Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.

Queen. Let not thy mother lose her prayers,
Hamlet:

I pray thee, stay with us; go not to Wittenberg.

ble.

"How many a holy and obsequious tear

Hath dear religious love stol'n from mine eye,

As interest of the dead!"

H.

Incorrect is here used, apparently, in the sense of incorrigi

H.

13 Unprevailing was used in the sense of unavailing as late as Dryden's time.

14 That is, dispense, bestow.