Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

141. Out of thy star

out of thy sphere. 145. Took the fruits of, profited by. 148. Watch, wakefulness, insomnia. 149. Lightness = light headedness.

151. All we = we all. Cf. Mark xii. 44: All they did cast in of their abundance.' Polonius's description of the stages of Hamlet's illness is very comic. He had in fact seen nothing; it was Ophelia, induced by Laertes, who told him.

159. Center of the earth.

163. Arras, the tapestry hung on the walls. A person might hide between the wall and it without being discovered. Great use is made of this in III. iv. (Arras is a town in the north of France, and gives its name to the hangings. Cf. bayonet, from Bayonne; pistol, from Pistoja; currant, from Corinth, etc.)

164. Encounter, manner of address.

168. Wretch, sometimes used as a term of endearment, mingled with pity.

170. Board, accost. When Polonius is not pedantic, he is coarse.————— Presently, immediately.

172. God-'a-mercy God have mercy.

174. Excellent for excellently.

181. For ... carrion. It has been supposed that Hamlet reads this out of his book.

190. Matter. Hamlet purposely misunderstands Polonius's meaning of the word.

195. Purging, discharging.

207. Pregnant, full of meaning.

of phrase.

225. Indifferent, middling, average.

Happiness, felicity

234. Doomsday, the Day of Judgment. (Doom is connected with deem, and with dom in kingdom, etc., and dempster, the old word for a judge.)

242. Confines, places of confinement.

259. Then are our beggars bodies; for our beggars have no ambition, and are thus the only solid and substantial existences.

260. Outstretched, strained, hyperbolical.

261. Fay; from O. Fr. fei, faith.

266. Most dreadfully attended by my own wretched thoughts. But Mr. Hunter thinks that 'Hamlet alludes to the annoyance of his being watched and observed so much.' 267. Beaten, usually trod, familiar, usual.

276. But to the purpose. For, if they did speak to the purpose, they must tell the truth.

284. Consonancy, agreement in age. This word is only twice used by S.

285. A better proposer, a more skillful speaker. Even, plain, honest.

- Direct, straightforward. ('A straight line is the shortest distance between two points.') 289. Of you on you.

=

293. Prevent, anticipate, and so enable you to keep faith with those who have invited you. And the Prayer-Book has, 'Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings' (where prevent has the literal Latin sense of go before).

294. Moult, drop. The O. E. was mouten; and the is inorganic, as the word comes from Lat. mutāre, to change. The place where hawks were kept was called mews-from the same root.

295. Forgone, given up. (Usually, but erroneously, written foregone. The for is the negative prefix, as in forget, forgo, forgive, etc.)

299. Brave, beautiful, grand.

300. Fretted, adorned. There were in O. E. two verbs fret the one (1), fretan, to eat (H. Ger. fressen, said of animals); the other (2), frætwan, to adorn. For (1), see Chaucer, The Knightës Tale: The sowe freten the child right in the cradel.' For (2), Piers Plowman, ii. 11: 'Alle hir five fyngres were fretted with rynges.'

304. Express, expressive, or full of expression.

306. Paragon, the peerless one, or highest pattern. From two Spanish prepositions, wara con = in comparison with.

307. Quintessence, the fifth or highest essence of the alchemists - the essence which remained after the four 'elements,' earth, air, fire, and water, had been removed from the substance.

314. Lenten, meager, poor. During Lent players were not allowed to perform in London.

315. Coted, came up with and passed. It was a term in hunting.

317. He that plays the king. Hamlet here for the first time has a vague forecast in his mind of the plan he is going to form.

320. Humorous = full of humors and whims. 322. Lungs tickle o' the sere, lungs easily moved to laughter. The sere (now spelled sear) is the catch in a gunlock which holds the hammer till it is released by the trigger. If this part of the lock be so made, or if it is much worn, the sear (or grip) may be so tickle, or ticklish, that a slight touch may displace it, and the gun goes off. The general idea here is of persons so prone to laughter that a touch of wit will start them. The Lady shall mar the measure rather than not express herself freely.

326. The City, Copenhagen. Elsinore is the place at present.

327. Residence =

remaining in the city.

329. Inhibition, prohibition to act. This may refer to the limiting of public performances in 1600 and 1601 to the two theaters called The Globe and The Fortune.. Innovation,' the insurrection of Essex.'

336. Aery (incorrectly spelled eyry), an eagle's nest; a brood of eagles or hawks. From Low Lat. area, a nest of a bird of prey; perhaps from Icelandic ari, an eagle.

Professor Skeat says, in his Etymological Dictionary, 'When fairly imported into English, the word was ingeniously connected with Middle English, ey, an egg, as if the word meant an eggery; hence it came to be spelled eyrie or eyry, and to be misinterpreted accordingly.. Eyases, nestlings, unfledged birds.

=

337. Cry out on the top of question, at the top of their voices. Question here speech. Tyrannically, so as to put down all different expressions of opinion.

340. Wearing rapiers, grown-up people. Goosequills, those little eyases. The allusion here is to the boys of the chapel Royal, etc., whose performing of plays was fashionable when this play was written.

343. Escoted, paid. A French word. scot-free.)

344. Quality, profession.

(Cogs.: Shot;

346. Common players, players on the ' common (or public) stages.'

348. Exclaim against their own succession. The men who write for them now wrong them, by making them exclaim against what they are themselves afterwards to be. 349. Much to-do = much ado.

350. Tarre, egg on.

352. Argument, the plot of the play. The heading of each of the books of Paradise Lost is called The Argument.

357. Carry it away, carry off the palm.

358. Hercules. They carry all the world before them. There is allusion to the sign of the Globe Theater - which was Hercules carrying the round earth.

360. Mine uncle is king. Hamlet gives this as another instance of the facility with which honors are conferred on new claimants.

361. Make mows, make grimaces. 363. Picture in little = miniature.

368. Appurtenance, that which properly belongs or appertains to.

369. Comply with you in this garb, show you ceremonious courtesy in this way. Extent, extending of

courtesy.

-

371. Show fairly outward, have an attractive appear

ance.

376. Handsaw, an abbreviation of hernsaw, or heronshaw, a dialectic form of heron. Hamlet alludes to the sport of hawking. If a heron is started, he would probably fly with the wind; if the wind is N.N.W., he would fly to the south; and the rays of the sun would make it difficult to distinguish the hawk from the heron. If the wind were south, the heron would fly north; and, as the sun would be at the back of the sportsman, it would be easy to distinguish both birds. Hamlet means that he is only partially mad. Cl. P. S.

[blocks in formation]

384. You say right. This is said to keep Polonius from fancying they have been talking about him.

388. Roscius, a great actor at Rome, in 70 B.C. He taught Cicero to speak. Good actors were proverbially called

Roscii.

390. Buz, buz. Blackstone says, 'Buz used to be an interjection at Oxford when any one began a story that was generally known before.'

392. Then came - probably a line from an old ballad. 396. Scene individable, a play in which the unity of place is strictly adhered to. The Greek tragedy has no division into scenes, the scene remaining the same or undivided throughout the play. In the Gothic drama, or poem unlimited, the changes of scene were without definite limits.

Poem unlimited, a play in which neither the unity of place nor that of time is observed. - Seneca, the author

« ZurückWeiter »