That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? why, she would hang on him,

be a little far-fetched; but it has an exquisite beauty. By the Satyr is meant Pan, as by Hyperion, Apollo. Pan and Apollo were brothers, and the allusion is to the contention between those gods for the preference in musick. Warburton.

All our English poets are guilty of the same false quantity, and call Hyperion Hyperion; at least the only instance I have met with to the contrary, is in the old play of Fuimus Troes, 1633: Blow gentle Africus,

"Play on our poops, when Hyperion's son

"Shall couch in west."

Shakspeare, I believe, has no allusion in the present instance, except to the beauty of Apollo, and its immediate opposite, the deformity of a Satyr. Steevens.

6 That he might not beteem the winds of heaven —] In former editions:

That he permitted not the winds of heaven This is a sophisticated reading, copied from the players in some of the modern editions, for want of understanding the poet, whose text is corrupt in the old impressions: all of which that I have had the fortune to see, concur in reading :

so loving to my mother,

That he might not beteene the winds of heaven

Visit her face too roughly.

Beteene is a corruption without doubt, but not so inveterate a one, but that, by the change of a single letter, and the separation of two words mistakenly jumbled together, I am verily persuaded, I have retrieved the poet's reading

That he might not let e'en the winds of heaven &c.

Theobald. The obsolete and corrupted verb-beteene, (in the first folio) which should be written (as in all the quartos) beteeme, was changed, as above, by Mr. Theobald; and with the aptitude of his conjecture succeeding criticks appear to have been satisfied. Beteeme, however, occurs in the tenth Book of Arthur Golding's version of Ovid's Metamorphoses, 4to. 1587; and, from the corresponding Latin, must necessarily signify, to vouchsafe, deign, permit, or suffer:

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Yet could he not beteeme

"The shape of anie other bird than egle for to seeme." Sign. R. 1. b.

66

nulla tamen alite verti

Dignatur, nisi quæ possit sua fulmina ferre." V. 157. Jupiter (though anxious for the possession of Ganymede) would not deign to assume a meaner form, or suffer change into an humbler shape, than that of the august and vigorous fowl who bears the thunder i. his pounces.

As if increase of appetite had grown

By what it fed on: And yet, within a month,

Let me not think on 't;-Frailty, thy name is woman!-
A little month; or ere those shoes were old,
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears;7 --why she, even she,--
O heaven! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer,-married with my uncle,
My father's brother; but no more like my father,
Than I to Hercules: Within a month;
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married:-O most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to, good;

But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue!
Enter HORATIO, BERNARDO, and MARCELLUS.
Hor. Hail to your lordship!

Ham.

I am glad to see you well:

Horatio, or I do forget myself.

Hor. The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.
Ham. Sir, my good friend; I'll change that name with

you.

The existence and signification of the verb beteem being thus established, it follows, that the attention of Hamlet's father to his queen was exactly such as is described in the Enterlude of the Life and Repentaunce of Marie Magdalaine, &c. by Lewis Wager,

4to. 1567:

"But evermore they were unto me very tender,

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They would not suffer the wynde on me to blowe.”

I have therefore replaced the ancient reading, without the slightest hesitation, in the text.

This note was inserted by me in The Gentleman's Magazine, some years before Mr. Malone's edition of our author (in which the same justification of the old reading-beteeme, occurs,) had made its appearance. Steevens.

7 Like Niobe, all tears;] Shakspeare might have caught this idea from an ancient ballad entitled The falling out of Lovers is the renewing of Love:

"Now I, like weeping Niobe,

66 May wash my handes in teares," &c.

Of this ballad Amantium iræ &c. is the burden.

8

Steevens.

I'll change that name ] I'll be your servant, you shall be my friend. Johnson.

And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?—
Marcellus?

Mar. My good lord,

Ham. I am very glad to see you; good even, sir.1
But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?
Hor. A truant disposition, good my lord.
Ham. I would not hear your enemy say so;
Nor shall you do mine ear that violence,
To make it truster of your own report
Against yourself: I know, you are no truant.
But what is your affair in Elsinore?

We'll teach you to drink deep, ere you depart.
Hor. My lord, I came to see your father's funeral.
Ham. I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-student;
I think, it was to see my mother's wedding.

Hor. Indeed, my lord, it follow'd hard upon.

Ham. Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral bak'd meats2

9 what make you -] A familiar phrase for what are you doing. Johnson.

See Vol. V, p. 9, n. 4. Steevens.

11

good even, sir.] So the copies. Sir Thomas Hanmer and Dr. Warburton put it-good morning. The alteration is of no importance, but all licence is dangerous. There is no need of any change. Between the first and eighth scene of this Act it is apparent, that a natural day must pass, and how much of it is already over, there is nothing that can determine. The King has held a council. It may now as well be evening as morning. Johnson. The change made by Sir T. Hanmer might be justified by what Marcellus said of Hamlet at the conclusion of sc. i:

2

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and I this morning know
"Where we shall find him most convenient."

Steevens.

the funeral bak'd meats -] It was anciently the general custom to give a cold entertainment to mourners at a funeral. In distant counties this practice is continued among the yeomanry. See The Tragique Historie of the Faire Valeria of London, 1598: "His corpes was with funerall pompe conveyed to the church, and there sollemnly enterred, nothing omitted which necessitie or custom could claime; a sermon, a banquet, and like observations." Again, in the old romance of Syr Degore, bl. 1. no date: "A great feaste would he holde

Collins.

"Upon his quenes mornynge day, "That was buryed in an abbay." See also, Hayward's Life and Raigne of King Henrie the Fourth, 4to. 1599, p. 135: "Then hee [King Richard II] was conveyed to Langley Abby in Buckinghamshire,-and there obscurely in

Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
'Would I had met my dearest foe in heavens
Or ever4 I had seen that day, Horatio!--
My father, Methinks, I see my father.
Hor.

My lord?

Ham. In my mind's eye, Horatio.

Where,

Hor. I saw him once, he was a goodly king. Ham. He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.

terred, without the charge of a dinner for celebrating the funeral." Malone.

3

dearest foe in heaven-] Dearest for direst, most dreadful, most dangerous. Johnson.

Dearest is most immediate, consequential, important. So, in Romeo and Juliet:

166

- a ring that I must use

66 In dear employment."

Again, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Maid in the Mill: "You meet your dearest enemy in love,

"With all his hate about him." Steevens.

--

See Timon of Athens, Act V, sc. ii, Vol. XV. Malone. 4 Or ever -] Thus the quarto, 1604. The folio reads-ere ever. This is not the only instance in which a familiar phraseology has been substituted for one more ancient, in that valuable copy. Malone.

In my mind's eye,] This expression occurs again in our author's Rape of Lucrece:

himself behind

"Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind."

Again, in Chaucer's Man of Lawes Tale:

"But it were with thilke eyen of his minde,

"With which men mowen see whan they ben blinde." Ben Jonson has borrowed it in his Masque called Love's Triumph through Callipolis:

"As only by the mind's eye may be seen."

Again, in the Microcosmos of John Davies of Hereford, 4to. 1605:

"And through their closed eies their mind's eye peeps." Telemachus lamenting the absence of Ulysses, is represented in like manner :

σε Οσσόμενος πατέρ' ἐσθλὸν ἐνὶ φρεσὶν.”

Odyss. L. I, 115.

Steevens.

This expression occurs again in our author's 113th Sonnet: "Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind." Malone.

́Hor. My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.

Ham. Saw! who?

Hor. My lord, the king your father.

Ham.

The king my father! Hor. Season your admiration" for a while With an attent ear; till I may deliver, Upon the witness of these gentlemen,

This marvel to you.

Ham.

For God's love, let me hear.

Hor. Two nights together had these gentlemen, Marcellus and Bernardo, on their watch,

In the dead waist and middle of the night,

Been thus encounter'd. A figure like your father,

• I shall not look upon his like again.] Mr. Holt proposes to read, from an emendation of Sir Thomas Samwell, Bart. of Upton, near Northampton:

Eye shall not look upon his like again;

and thinks it is more in the true spirit of Shakspeare than the other. So, in Stowe's Chronicle, p. 746: "In the greatest pomp that euer eye behelde." Again, in Sandys's Travels, p. 150: "We went this day through the most pregnant and pleasant valley that ever eye beheld."

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Again, in Sidney's Arcadia, Lib. III, p. 293, edit. 1633: — as cruell a fight as eye did ever see." Steevens. 7 Season your admiration] That is, temper it. Johnson. 8 With an attent ear;] Spenser, as well as our poet, uses attent for attentive. Malone.

9 In the dead waist and middle of the night,] This strange phra seology seems to have been common in the time of Shakspeare. By waist is meant nothing more than middle; and hence the epithet dead did not appear incongruous to our poet. So, in Marston's Malecontent, 1604:

""Tis now about the immodest waist of night."

i. e. midnight. Again, in The Puritan, a comedy, 1607: “ ere the day be spent to the girdle, —."

وو

In the old copies the word is spelt wast, as it is in the second Act, sc. ii: "Then you live about her wast, or in the middle of her favours." The same spelling is found in King Lear, Act IV, sc. vi: "Down from the wast, they are centaurs." See also, Minsheu's Dict. 1617: "Wast, middle, or girdle-steed." We have the same pleonasm in another line in this play:

"And given my heart a working mute and dumb.” All the modern editors read-In the dead waste &c. Malone. Dead waste may be the true reading. See Vol. II, p. 35, n. 2. Steevens.