Than is my deed to my moft painted word.

Oh heavy burden!

Pol, I hear him coming; let's withdraw, my Lord. [Exeunt all but Ophelia.

Enter Hamlet.

Ham. To be, or not to be? that is the question.Whether 'tis nobler in the mind, to suffer The flings and arrows of outrageous fortune; Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, (33)

(33) Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And

And by oppofing end them?] I once imagin'd, that, to preferve the uniformity of metaphor, and as it is a word our Author is fond of ufing elfwhere, he might have wrote ;- —a liege of troubles. So, in Midfummer Night's Dream. Or, if there were a sympathy in choice, War, death, or fickness did lay fiege to it. King Jobn

Death having prey'd upon the outward parts, Leaves them; invifible his fiege is now, &c. Romeo and Juliet.

You, to remove that fiege of grief from her, Betroth'd, and would have married her, &c. Timon of Athens.

Not even Nature,

To whom all fores lay fiege, can bear great fortune
But by contempt of nature.

Or one might conjecturally amend the paffage, nearer to the traces of the text, thus ;

Or,

Or to take arms against th' assay of troubles,

-against a 'say of troubles.

i.e. against the attempts, attacks, &c. So, before, in this play Makes vow before his uncle, never more

To give th' assay of arms against your majesty,

Henry V.

Galling the gleaned land with hot assays.

Macbeth.

Lear.

-their malady convinces

The great affay of art.

And that thy tongue fome 'fay of breeding breathes, &c. &c. But, perhaps, any correction whatever may be unneceffary; confidering the great licentioufnefs of our Poet in joining heterogeneous metaphors;

And by oppofing end them -to die,-to fleep-
No more; and by a fleep, we fay, to end
The heart-ache, and the thoufand natural fhocks
That flesh is heir to ; 'tis a confummation

Devoutly to be wifh'd. To die-to fleep-(34)
To fleep? perchance, to dream; ay, there's the rub-
For in that fleep of death what dreams may come,.

metaphors; and confidering too, that a fea is used not only to fignify the ocean, but likewise a vast quantity, multitude, or confluence of any thing else. Inftances are thick both in facred and prophane writers. The prophet Jeremiah, particularly, in one paffage, calls a prodigious army coming up against a city, a sea: chap. li. 42. The fea is come up upen Babylon; he is covered with the multitude of the waves thereof, SCHYLUS is frequent in the ufe of this metaphor ;

В yág nữμa xegouton spal. Sept. cont. Thebas, v. 64. And again, a little lower.

Κῦμα γὰς περὶ πόλιν
Δοχμολόφων ἀνδρῶν
καχλάζει πνοεῖς

Αρεος ὀνόμενον.

1bid. v. 1167

And again, in his Perfians.

Δόκιμος δ ̓ ἔτι; ὑποφὰς

Μεγάλω ρεύματι φωτῶν,

Εχυροῖς ἕρκεσιν είργειν

̓Αμαχιν κῦμα θαλάσσης,

v. 87.

So Cicero, in one of his letters to Atticus, lb. vii. Ep. 4. Fluctum enim totius Barbariæ ferre urbs una non poterat. And, befides a sea of troubles among the Greeks grew into proverbial ufage; nanov Jáλacoa, nanav τginuμíi. So that the expreffion, figuratively, means, the troubles of human life, which flow in upon us, and encompass us round, like a fea. Our Poet too has employ'd this metaphor in his Antony, fpeaking of a confluence of courtiers;

I was of late as petty to his ends,

As is the morn-dew on the myrtle leaf
To his grand fea.

The fame image and expreffion, I obferve, is ufed by Beaumont and Fletcher in their Two Noble Kinsmen.

(34)

-Tho' I know,

His ocean needs not my poor drops, yet they
Muft yield their tribute there.

-To die, to fleep;

To fleep? perchance, to dream :) This admirable fine reflexion feems, in a paltry manner, to be fneer'd at by Beaumont and Fletcher in their Scornful Lady,

Rog. Have patience, Sir, until our fellow Nickolas be deceas'd,

that is, afleep; to fleep, to die; to die, to fleep; a very figure, Sir.

When

When we have fhuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us paufe.I here's the refpect,
That makes calamity of fo long life.

For who would bear the whips and fcorns of time,
Th' oppreffor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pang of defpis'd love, the law's delay,
The infolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes;
When he himself might his Quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardles bear,
To groan and sweat under a weary life?
But that the dread of fomething after death,
(That undiscover'd country, from whose bourne (35)
No

(35) That undiscover'd country, from whose bourne

No traveller returns.] As fome fuperficial critics have, without the leaft fcruple, accofed the Poet of forgetfulness and felf contradiction from this paffage; feeing that in this very play he introduces a character from the other world, the ghost of Hamlet's father: I have thought this circumftance worthy of a juftification. 'Tis certain, to introduce a ghoft, a being from the other world, and to fay, that no traveller returns from thofe confines, is, literally taken, as abfolute a contradiction as can be fuppos'd & facto terminis. But we are to take notice, that Shakespeare brings his ghoft only from a middle flate, or local purgatory: a prifon- boufe, as he makes his fpirit call it, where he was doom'd, for a term only, to expiate his fins of nature. By the undiscover'd country here mention'd, he may, perhaps, mean that laft and eternal refidence of fouls in a ftate of full blifs or mifery; which fpirits in a middle state could not be acquainted with, or explain. So that if any latitude of fente may be allow'd to the Poet's words, tho' he admits the poffibility of a fpirit returning from the dead, he yet holds, that the fate of the dead cannot be communicated; and, with that allowance, it remains ftill an undiscovered country. We are to obferve too, that even his ghoft, who comes from purgatory, (or, whatever has been fignified under that denomination) comes under reftrictions: and tho' he confeffes himself fubject to a viciffitude of torments, yet he fays, at the fame time, that be is forbid to tell the fecrets of bis prifon boufe. The antients had the fame notion of our obfcure and twilight knowledge of an after being. Valerius Flaccus, I remember, (if I may be indulg'd in a short digreffion) fpeaking of the lower regions, and ftate of the spirits there, has an expreffion, which, in one sense, comes clofe to our Author's undifcover'd country;

-Superis incognita tellus.

And it is obfervable that Virgil, before he enters upon a description of

bell,

No traveller returns) puzzles the will;

And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of.
Thus confcience does make cowards of us all
And thus the native hue of refolution

Is ficklied o'er with the pale caft of thought;
And enterprizes of great pith, and moment,
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lofe the name of action-Soft

you, now! [Seeing Ophelia. The fair Ophelia? Nymph, in thy orifons Be all my fins remembred.

Oph. Good my Lord,

How does your honour for this many a day?
Ham. I humbly thank you, well;

Oph. My Lord, I have remembrances of yours,
That I have longed long to re-deliver.

I pray you, now receive them.

[did;

Ham. No, I never gave you aught.
Oph. My honour'd Lord, you know right well, you
And with them words of fo fweet breath compos'd,
As made the things more rich: that perfume loft,
Take these again; for to the noble mind

Rich gifts wax poor, when givers prove unkind.
There, my Lord.

Ham. Ha, ha! are you honest?
Oph. My Lord

Ham. Are you fair ?

Oph. What means your Lordship?

Ham. That if you be honeft and fair, you fhould admit no difcourfe to your beauty.

Oph. Could beauty, my Lord, have better commerce than with honesty ?

bell, and of the elyfian fields, implores the permiffion of the infernal deities; and profeffes, even then, to difcover no more than bearfay concerning their myfterious dominions.

Dii. quibus imperium eft animarum, umbræque filentes

Et Chaos, & Phlegethon, loca noƐte tacentia late,

Sit mibi fas audita loqui, fit numine veftro
Pandere res alta terrâ & caligine merfas

Æneid. VI.

Ham.

Ham. Ay, truly; (36) for the power of beauty will fooner transform honefty from what it is, to a bawd; than the force of honefty can tranflate beauty into its likeness. This was fometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof.-I did love you once.

Oph. Indeed, my Lord, you made me believe fo.

Ham. You fhould not have believ'd me. For virtue cannot fo inoculate our old ftock, but we fhall relish of it. I lov'd you not.

Oph. I was the more deceiv'd.

Ham. Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of finners? I am my felf indifferent honest; but yet I could accufe me of fuch things, that it were better, my mother had not borne me I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck, than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should fuch fellows, as 1, do crawling between heav'n and earth? we are arrant knaves, believe none of usGo thy ways to a nunnery- -Where's your father? Oph. At home, my Lord.

Farewel.

Ham. Let the doors be fhut upon him, that he may play the fool no where but in's own house. Oph. Oh help him, you fweet heav'ns!

Ham. If thou doft marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry. Be thou as chafte as ice, as pure as fnow, thou shalt not escape calumny.-Get thee to a nunnery, -farewel-Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a

(36) Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will fooner transform boresty from what it is to a bard, &c.] Our Author has twice before, in his As You Like it, play'd with a fentiment bordering upon this.

Celia. "Tis true, for thofe, that he makes fair, the scarce makes beneft; and those, that she makes boneft, the makes very ill-favoured. And again,

Aud. Would you not have me boneft ? ·

.

Clown. No, truly, unlets thou wert hard-favour'd; for boxefty coupled to beauty, is to have honey a fauce to fugar.

The foundation of both paffages may poffibly have been of claffical

extraction.

Lis eft cum formâ magna pudicitiæ.

-Rara eft adeò concordia formæ

Atque pudicitiæ.

Ovid.

Juvenal.

fool;