Hor. In what particular thought to work, I know

not9;

But, in the gross and scope of mine opinion,
This bodes some strange eruption to our state.

Mar. Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,

Why this same strict and most observant watch
So nightly toils the subject of the land?
And why such daily cast of brazen cannon,
And foreign mart for implements of war;
Why such impress 10 of shipwrights, whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week:
What might be toward, that this sweaty haste
Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day;
Who is't, that can inform me?

Hor.

At least, the whisper goes so.

That can I;

Our last king,
Whose image even but now appear'd to us,
Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
Thereto prick'd on by a most emulate pride,
Dar'd to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet
(For so this side of our known world esteem'd him),
Did slay this Fortinbras; who, by a seal'd compact,
Well ratified by law and heraldry,

Did forfeit with his life, all those his lands,
Which he stood seiz'd of, to the conqueror:
Against the which, a moiety competent
Was gaged by our king: which had return'd

9 That is, what particular train of thought to follow, I know not,' &c. The first quarto reads:

'In what particular to work I know not.'

10 To impress signifies only to retain shipwrights by giving them prest money for holding themselves in readiness to be employed. Thus in Chapman's second book of Homer's Odyssey: :

'I from the people straight will press for you,

Free voluntaries.'

See King Lear, Act iv. Sc. 2; and Blount's Glossography, in v. prest.

VOL. X.

To the inheritance of Fortinbras,

11

Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same co-mart 11,
And carriage of the article design'd 12,

His fell to Hamlet: Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
Of unimproved mettle hot and full 13,
Hath in the skirts of Norway, here and there,
Shark'd 14 up a list of landless resolutes,
For food and diet, to some enterprise

That hath a stomach 15 in't: which is no other
(As it doth well appear unto our state),
But to recover of us, by strong hand,
And terms compulsatory, those 'foresaid lands
So by his father lost: And this, I take it,
Is the main motive of our preparations;

The source of this our watch; and the chief head
Of this post-haste and romage 16 in the land.

11 Co-mart is the reading of the quarto of 1604; the folio reads, covenant. Co-mart, it is presumed, means a joint bargain. No other instance of the word is known.

12 i. e. and import of that article marked out, assigned or appointed for that purpose.' Designed is here used in the sense of of designatus, Lat.

13 The first quarto reads, 'Of inapproved.' 'Of unimproved mettle hot and full;' i. e. of unimpeached or unquestioned courage. To improve anciently signified to impeach, to impugn. Thus Florio: Improbare, to improove, to impugn.' The French have still improuver, with the same meaning; from improbare, Lat. Numerous instances of improve in this sense may be found in the writings of Shakspeare's time. And yet Johnson explains it, 'full of spirit, not regulated or guided by knowledge or experience,' and has been hitherto uncontradicted.

"Scroccare is properly

14 i. e. snapped up or taken up hastily. to do any thing at another man's cost, to shark or shift for any thing. Scroccolone, a cunning shifter or sharker for any thing in time of need, namely for victuals; a tall trencher-man, shifting up and down for belly cheer.' The same word also signifies to snap. This word has not yet lost its force in vulgar conversation.

15 Stomach is used for determined purpose.

16 Romage, now spelt rummage, and in common use as a verb, though not as a substantive, for making a thorough ransack or search, a busy and tumultuous movement.

17 [Ber. I think, it be no other, but even so: Well may it sort 18, that this portentous figure Comes armed through our watch; so like the king That was, and is, the question 19 of these wars.

Hor. A mote it is, to trouble the mind's eye. In the most high and palmy 20 state of Rome, A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.

As, stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun; and the moist star 22,
Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands,
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.
And even the like precurse of fierce events,—
As harbingers preceding still the fates,
And prologue to the omen 23 coming on,
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
Unto our climatures and countrymen.-]

Re-enter Ghost.

But, soft; behold! lo, where it comes again!
I'll cross it, though it blast me 24.-Stay, illusion!

17 All the lines within crotchets in this play are omitted in the folio of 1623. The title-pages of the quartos of 1604 and 1605 declare this play to be enlarged to almost as much againe as it was, according to the true and perfect copie.'

18 i. e. fall in with the idea of, suit, accord.

19 i. e. theme, or subject.

20 i. e. victorious; the Palm being the emblem of victory. Chapman, in his Middle Temple Masque, has high-palm'd hearts.' 21 A line or more is here supposed to be lost.

22 i. e. the moon.

'Not that night-wand'ring pale and watry star.'

Marlowe's Hero and Leander.

23 Omen is here put by a figure of speech for predicted event. 24 The person who crossed the spot on which a spectre was became subject to its malignant influence. Among the reasons for supposing the death of Ferdinand, Earl of Derby,

seen,

If thou hast any sound, or use of voice,
Speak to me:

If there be any good thing to be done,
That may to thee do ease, and grace to me,
Speak to me:

If thou art privy to thy country's fate,
Which, happily, foreknowing, may avoid,
O, speak!

Or, if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,

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 partisan?

Hor. Do, if it will not stand.

We do it wrong, being so majestical,
To offer it the show of violence;

For it is, as the air, invulnerable 25,

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
I have heard,

Upon a fearful summons.

(who died young, in 1594), to have been occasioned by witchcraft, is the following:- On Friday there appeared a tall man, who twice crossed him swiftly; and when the earl came to the place where he saw this man he fell sick.'-Lodge's Illustrations of English History, vol. iii. p. 48.

Johnson remarks that the speech of Horatio to the spectre is very elegant and noble, and congruous to the common traditions of the causes of apparitions.

25 Thus in Macbeth :

'As easy may'st thou the intrenchant air

With thy keen sword impress.'

And in King John:

'Against the invulnerable clouds of heaven.'

The cock, that is the trumpet of the morn 26
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
Awake the god of day; and at his warning,
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
The extravagant and erring 27 spirit hies
To his confine: and of the truth herein
This present object made probation.

Mar. It faded on the crowing of the cock 28. Some say, that ever 'gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, This bird of dawning singeth all night long: And then they say no spirit dares stir abroad; The nights are wholesome: then no planets strike,

26

And now the cocke, the morning's trumpeter,
Play'd hunts-up for the day-stay to appear.'

Drayton.

27The extravagant and erring spirit.' Extra-vagans, wandering about, going beyond bounds.' Thus in Othello :

'To an extravagant and wheeling stranger.'

It is remarkable that stravagant is the reading of the first quarto, which Steevens points out as used in the sense of vagrant. 'They took me up for a stravagant.' This is the 'stravagare' of the Italians; 'to wander, to gad, or stray beyond or out of the way.' Thus in a Midsummer Night's Dream:

And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger,

At whose approach, ghosts wandering here and there
Troop home.

Erring is erraticus, straying or roving up and down. Mr. Douce has justly observed that the epithets extravagant and erring are highly poetical and appropriate, and seem to prove that Shakspeare was not altogether ignorant of the Latin language.'

28 This is a very ancient superstition. Philostratus, giving an account of the apparition of Achilles' shade to Apollonius of Tyanna, says, 'that it vanished with a little gleam as soon as the cock crowed.' There is a Hymn of Prudentius, and another of St. Ambrose, in which it is mentioned; and there are some lines in the latter very much resembling Horatio's speech. Mr. Douce has given them in his illustrations of Shakspeare.