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that day that our last king Hamlet overcame Fortinbras.

HAM. How long's that since?

1 CLO. Cannot you tell that? every fool can tell that: It was that very day that young Hamlet was born: he that is mad, and sent into England.

HAM. Ay, marry, why was he sent into England?

1 CLO. Why, because he was mad: he shall recover his wits there; or, if he do not, 'tis no great matter there.

HAM. Why?

1 CLO. 'Twill not be seen in him there; there the men are as mad as he 7.

HAM. How came he mad?

1 CLO. Very strangely, they say.

HAM. How strangely?

1 CLO. 'Faith, e'en with losing his wits. HAM. Upon what ground?

1 CLO. Why, here in Denmark; I have been sexton here, man, and boy, thirty years.

HAM. How long will a man lie i'the earth ere he rot?

1 CLO. 'Faith, if he be not rotten before he die, (as we have many pocky corses now-a-days, that will scarce hold the laying in,) he will last you some

6 - that young Hamlet was born:] By this scene it appears that Hamlet was then thirty years old, and knew Yorick well, who had been dead twenty-three years. And yet in the beginning of the play he is spoken of as a very young man, one that designed to go back to school, i. e. to the University of Wittenberg. The poet in the fifth Act had forgot what he wrote in the first.

BLACKSTONE.

7 "Twill not be seen in him there; there the men are as mad as he.]

Nimirum insanus paucis videatur; eo quod
Maxima pars hominum morbo jactatur eodem.

Horace, Sat. lib. II. iii. 120. STEEVENS. 8 now a-days,] Omitted in the quarto. MALONE.

eight year, or nine year: a tanner will last you nine year.

HAM. Why he more than another?

1 CLO. Why, sir, his hide is so tanned with his trade, that he will keep out water a great while; and your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body. Here's a scull now hath lain you i'the earth three-and-twenty years.

HAM. Whose was it?

1 CLO. A whoreson mad fellow's it was; Whose do you think it was?

HAM. Nay, I know not.

1 CLO. A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! he poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once. This same scull, sir, was Yorick's scull, the king's jester.

HAM. This ?

1 CLO. E'en that.

[Takes the Scull.

HAM. Alas, poor Yorick !—I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips, that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning'? quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch *First folio, Here's a scull now, this scull.

† First folio, Let me see. Alas, &c.

Yorick's scull,] Thus the folio. The quarto reads-Sir Yorick's scull. MALONE.

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your own GRINNING?] Thus the quarto 1604. The folio reads-your own jeering? In that copy, after this word, and chapfallen, there is a note of interrogation, which all the editors have adopted. I doubt concerning its propriety. MALONE.

thick, to this favour3 she must come; make her laugh at that.-Pr'ythee, Horatio, tell me one thing.

HOR. What's that, my lord?

HAM. Dost thou think, Alexander looked o'this fashion i'the earth?

HOR. E'en so.

HAM. And smelt so ? pah!

HOR. E'en so, my lord.

[Throws down the Scull.

HAM. To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till he find it stopping a bunghole ?

HOR. "Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so.

HAM. No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it: As thus; Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam: And why of that loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel ?

Imperious Cæsar 4, dead, and turn'd to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away:

2

- my lady's CHAMBER,] Thus the folio. The quartos read -my lady's table, meaning, I suppose, her dressing-table.

STEEVENS.

3 to this FAVOUR -] i. e. to this countenance or complexion. So, in Bacon's History of King Henry the Seventh: "He was a youth of fine favour and shape." MALONE.

4 IMPERIOUS Cæsar,] Thus the quarto 1604. The editor of the folio substituted imperial, not knowing that imperious was used in the same sense. See Troilus and Cressida, Act IV. Sc. V.: and Cymbeline, Act IV. Sc. II. There are other instances in the folio of a familiar term being substituted in the room of a more ancient word. See rites, for crants, in p. 477, n. 3.

MALONE.

O, that the earth, which kept the world in awe, Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaws! But soft! but soft! aside;-Here comes the king,

Enter Priests, &c. in Procession; the Corpse of OPHELIA, LAERTES and Mourners following; King, Queen, their Trains, &c.

The queen, the courtiers: Who is this they follow?

And with such maimed rites! This doth betoken,
The corse, they follow, did with desperate hand
Fordo its own life". "Twas of some estate 8:
Couch we a while, and mark.

[Retiring with HORATIO.

LAER. What ceremony else?

*First folio, that.

3 winter's FLAW !] Winter's blast. JOHNSON. So, in Marius and Sylla, 1594:

66

no doubt, this stormy flaw,

"That Neptune sent to cast us on this shore."

The quartos read-to expel the water's flaw. STEEVENS.

A flaw meant a sudden gust of wind. So, in Florio's Italian Dictionary, 1598: "Groppo, a flaw, or berrie of wind." See also, Cotgrave's Dictionary, 1611: "Lis de vent, a gust or flaw of wind." MALONE.

It is used as late as by Dryden, who seems to mean by it a

storm:

"And deluges of armies from the town

"Came pouring in; I heard the mighty flaw

"When first it broke." BoS WELL.

6-maimed rites!] Imperfect obsequies. JOHNSON.

7 FORDO its own life.] To fordo is to undo, to destroy. So, in Othello:

66

this is the night

"That either makes me, or fordoes me quite."

Again, in Acolastus, a comedy, 1529:

66

wolde to God

it might be leful for me to fordoo myself, or to make an ende of me."

STEEVENS.

8 - some estate :] Some person of high rank.

JOHNSON.

HAM.

A very noble youth: Mark.

LAER. What ceremony else?

That is Laertes,

1 PRIEST. Her obsequies have been as far enlarg'd

As we have warranty1: Her death was doubtful;
And, but that great command o'ersways the order,
She should in ground unsanctified have lodg'd
Till the last trumpet; for charitable prayers,
Shards, flints, and pebbles, should be thrown on
her,

Yet here she is allow'd her virgin crants 3,

1 Priest.] This Priest in the old quarto is called Doctor. STEEVENS,

'Her obsequies have been as far enlarg'd

AS WE HAVE WARRANTY:] Is there any allusion here to the coroner's warrant, directed to the minister and church-wardens of a parish, and permitting the body of a person, who comes to an untimely end, to receive christian burial? WHALLEY.

2 Shards,] i. e. broken pots or tiles, called pot-sherds, tilesherds. So, in Job, ii. 8: "And he took him a potsherd (i. e. a piece of a broken pot,) to scrape himself withal." RITSON.

3allow'd her virgin CRANTS,] Evidently corrupted from chants, which is the true word. A specific rather than a generic term being here required to answer to maiden strewments.

WARBURTON.

allow'd her virgin crants." Thus the quarto 1604. For this unusual word the editor of the first folio substituted rites. By a more attentive examination and comparison of the quarto copies and the folio, Dr. Johnson, I have no doubt, would have been convinced that this and many other changes in the folio were not made by Shakspeare, as is suggested in the following note. MALONE.

I have been informed by an anonymous correspondent, that crants is the German word for garlands, and I suppose it was retained by us from the Saxons. To carry garlands before the bier of a maiden, and to hang them over her grave, is still the practice in rural parishes.

Crants therefore was the original word, which the author, discovering to be provincial, and perhaps not understood, changed to a term more intelligible, but less proper. Maiden rites give no certain or definitive image. He might have put maiden wreaths, or maiden garlands, but he perhaps bestowed no thought

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