And prologue to the omen coming on,'- I rather believe that fierce signifies conspicuous, glaring. It is used in a somewhat similar sense in Timon of Athens: "O the fierce wretchedness that glory brings!" Again, in King Henry VIII. we have "fierce vanities." STEEVENS. And prologue to the omen coming on,] But prologue and omen are merely synonymous here. The poet means, that these strange phænomena are prologues and forerunners of the events presag'd: and such sense the slight alteration which I have ventured to make, by changing omen to omen'd, very aptly gives. Omen, for fate. WARBURTON. Hanmer follows Theobald. THEOBALD. A distich from the life of Merlin, by Heywood, however, will show that there is no occasion for correction: "Merlin well vers'd in many a hidden spell, "His countries omen did long since foretell." FARMER. Again, in The Vowbreaker: "And much I fear the weakness of her braine "Should draw her to some ominous exigent." Omen, I believe, is danger. STEEVENS. And even the like precurse of fierce events, As harbingers preceding still the fates, And prologue to the omen coming on,] So, in one of our author's poems: "But thou shrieking harbinger "Foul precurrer of the fiend, "Augur of the fever's end," &c. The omen coming on is, the approaching dreadful and portentous event. So, in King Richard III: 66 Thy name is ominous to children." i. e. (not boding ill fortune, but) destructive to children. "O Pomfret, Pomfret, O, thou bloody prison, Re-enter Ghost. But, soft; behold! lo, where it comes again! I'll cross it, though it blast me.-Stay, illusion! If thou hast any sound,2 or use of voice, Speak to me: If there be any good thing to be done,. If thou art privy to thy country's fate, Or, if thou hast uphoarded3 in thy life For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death, [Cock crows. Speak of it :-stay, and speak.-Stop it, Marcellus. MAR. Shall I strike at it with my partizan? HOR. Do, if it will not stand.* BER. HOR. 'Tis here! 'Tis here! 2 If thou hast any sound,] The speech of Horatio to the spectre is very elegant and noble, and congruous to the common traditions of the causes of apparitions. JOHNSON. 'Or, if thou hast uphoarded &c.] So, in Decker's Knight's Conjuring, &c. "If any of them had bound the spirit of gold by any charmes in caves, or in iron fetters under the ground, they should for their own soules quiet (which questionlesse else would whine up and down) if not for the good of their children, release it." STEEVENS. Stop it, Marcellus. Hor. Do, if it will not stand.] I am unwilling to suppose that Shakspeare could appropriate these absurd effusions to Horatio, who is a scholar, and has sufficiently proved his good un MAR. 'Tis gone! We do it wrong, being so majestical, For it is, as the air, invulnerable,5 [Exit Ghost, And our vain blows malicious mockery. BER. It was about to speak, when the cock crew. HOR. And then it started like a guilty thing Upon a fearful summons. I have heard, derstanding by the propriety of his addresses to the phantom. Such a man therefore must have known that "As easy might he the intrenchant air "With his keen sword impress," as commit any act of violence on the royal shadow. The words -Stop it, Marcellus.-and Do, if it will not stand-better suit the next speaker, Bernardo, who, in the true spirit of an unlettered officer, nihil non arroget armis. Perhaps the first idea that occurs to a man of this description, is to strike at what' offends him. Nicholas Poussin, in his celebrated picture of the Crucifixion, has introduced a similar occurrence. While lots are casting for the sacred vesture, the graves are giving up their dead. This prodigy is perceived by one of the soldiers, who instantly grasps his sword, as if preparing to defend himself, or resent such an invasion from the other world. The two next speeches-'Tis here!-'Tis here!—may be allotted to Marcellus and Bernardo; and the third-'Tis gone! &c. to Horatio, whose superiority of character indeed seems to demand it. As the text now stands, Marcellus proposes to strike the Ghost with his partizan, and yet afterwards is made to descant on the indecorum and impotence of such an attempt. The names of speakers have so often been confounded by the first publishers of our author, that I suggest this change with less hesitation than I should express concerning any conjecture that could operate to the disadvantage of his words or meaning.Had the assignment of the old copies been such, would it have been thought liable to objection? STEEVENS. it is, as the air, invulnerable,] So, in Macbeth: Again, in King John: "Against the invulnerable clouds of heaven." MALONE. The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn," 6 The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,] So, the quarto, 1604. Folio-to the day. In England's Parnassus, 8vo. 1600, I find the two following lines ascribed to Drayton, but know not in which of his poems they are found: "And now the cocke, the morning's trumpeter, Mr. Gray has imitated our poet: "The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, MALONE. Our Cambridge poet was more immediately indebted to Philips's Cider, B. I. 753: "When Chanticleer, with clarion shrill, recalls Thus also, Spenser, in his Fairy Queen, B. I. c. ii. s. 1: "And cheerful Chanticleer with his note shrill.” STEEVENS. 7 Whether in sea &c.] According to the pneumatology of that time, every element was inhabited by its peculiar order of spirits, who had dispositions different, according to their various places of abode. The meaning therefore is, that all spirits extravagant, wandering out of their element, whether aërial spirits visiting earth, or earthly spirits ranging the air, return to their station, to their proper limits in which they are confined. We might read: "And at his warning "Th' extravagant and erring spirit hies But this change, though it would smooth the construction, is not necessary, and, being unnecessary, should not be made against authority. JOHNSON. A Chorus in Andreini's drama, called Adamo, written in 1613, consists of spirits of fire, air, water, and hell, or subterraneous, being the exiled angels. "Choro di Spiriti ignei, aerei, acquatici, ed infernali," &c. These are the demons to which Shakspeare alludes. These spirits were supposed to controul the ele ments in which they respectively resided; and when formally invoked or commanded by a magician, to produce tempests, con The extravagant and erring spirit' hies flagrations, floods, and earthquakes. For thus says The Spanish Mandeville of Miracles, &c. 1600: "Those which are in the middle region of the ayre, and those that are under them nearer the earth, are those, which sometimes out of the ordinary operation of nature doe moove the windes with greater fury than they are accustomed; and do, out of season, congeele the cloudes, causing it to thunder, lighten, hayle, and to destroy the grasse, corne, &c. &c.—Witches and negromancers worke many such like things by the help of those spirits," &c. Ibid. Of this school therefore was Shakspeare's Prospero in The Tempest. T. WARTON. Bourne of Newcastle, in his Antiquities of the common People, informs us, "It is a received tradition among the vulgar, that at the time of cock-crowing, the midnight spirits forsake these lower regions, and go to their proper places. Hence it is, (says he) that in country places, where the way of life requires more early labour, they always go chearfully to work at that time; whereas if they are called abroad sooner, they imagine every thing they see a wandering ghost." And he quotes on this occasion, as all his predecessors had done, the well-known lines from the first hymn of Prudentius. I know not whose translation he gives us, but there is an old one by Heywood. The pious chansons, the hymns and carrols, which Shakspeare mentions presently, were usually copied from the elder Christian poets. FARMER. The extravagant-] i. e. got out of his bounds. WARBURTON. So, in Nobody and Somebody,, 1598: “—— they took me up for a 'stravagant." Shakspeare imputes the same effect to Aurora's harbinger in the last scene of the third Act of the Midsummer-Night's Dream. See Vol. IV. p. 432, n. 9. STEEVENS. 9 erring spirit,] Erring is here used in the sense of wandering. Thus, in Chapman's version of the fourth Book of Homer's Odyssey, Telemachus calls Ulysses "My erring father:-" And in the ninth Book, Ulysses describing himself and his companions to the Cyclop, says 66 -Erring Grecians we, "From Troy were turning homewards—" Erring, in short, is erraticus. STEEVENS. |