Neither a borrower, nor a lender be:
For loan oft loses both itself and friend;
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all,-To thine ownself be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell; my blessing season 15 this in thee!
Laer. Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.
Pol. The time invites you; go, your servants tend.
Laer. Farewell, Ophelia; and remember well
What I have said to you.

Oph.

And

'Tis in my memory

you yourself shall keep the key of it.

Laer. Farewell.

lock'd,

[Exit LAERTES.

Pol. What is't, Ophelia, he hath said to you?

Oph. So please you, something touching the lord

Hamlet.

Pol. Marry, well bethought:

'Tis told me, he hath very oft of late

Given private time to you; and you yourself

Have of your audience been most free and bounteous:
If it be so (as so 'tis put on me,

And that in way of caution), I must tell
you,
You do not understand yourself so clearly,
As it behoves my daughter, and your honour:
What is between you? give me up the truth.

Oph. He hath, my lord, of late, made many tenders Of his affection to me.

bially, and generous in its then familiar sense of noble or gentleman-like. See Florio in v. Generoso.

15 "To season, for to infuse," says Warburton. "It is more than to infuse, it is to infix in such a manner that it may never wear out," says Johnson. But hear one of the poet's cotemporaries:-"To season, to temper wisely, to make more pleasant and acceptable."-Baret. Thus in Act ii. Sc. 1, Polonius says to Reynaldo, "You may season it in the charge." And in a former Scene Horatio says:

"Season your admiration for a while."

Pol. Affection? puh! you speak like a green girl, Unsifted 16 in such perilous circumstance. Do you believe his tenders, as you call them?

Oph. I do not know, my lord, what I should think Pol. Marry, I'll teach you think yourself a baby ; That you have ta'en these tenders for true pay, Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly; Or (not to crack the wind of the poor phrase, Wronging it thus) you'll tender me a fool17.

Oph. My lord, he hath impórtun'd me with love, In honourable fashion.

Pol. Ay, fashion you may call it; go to, go to. Oph. And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,

With all the vows of heaven 18.

Pol. Ay, springes to catch woodcocks 19. I do
know,

When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul,
Lends the tongue vows 20: these blazes, daughter,
Giving more light than heat,-extinct in both,
Even in their promise, as it is a making,-
You must not take for fire. From this time,
Be somewhat scanter of your maiden
presence;

16 Unsifted, i. e. untried, inexperienced.

17 Shakespeare makes Polonius play on the equivocal use of the word tender, which was anciently used in the sense of regard or respect, as well as in that of offer. The folio reads “roaming it thus;" and the quarto, "wrong it thus."

18 Thus the folio. The quartos:

"With almost all the holy vows of heaven."

19 This was a proverbial phrase. There is a collection of epigrams under that title: the woodcock being accounted a witless bird, from a vulgar notion that it had no brains. Springes to catch woodcocks means arts to entrap simplicity.

20 Thus the quartos. The folio has "Gives the tongue vows." The quarto, 1603:

"How prodigal the tongue lends the heart vows." A few lines lower the folio repeats daughter after "From this time" at the end of the line, and misprints For instead of From.

Set your entreatments 21 at a higher rate,
Than a command to parley.
Believe so much in him, That he is

For lord Hamlet,

young;

And with a larger tether 22 may he walk,
Than may be given you. In few, Ophelia,

Do not believe his vows: for they are brokers 23,
Not of that die which their investments show,
But mere implorators of unholy suits,
Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds 24,
The better to beguile. This is for all,-

I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth,
Have you so slander any moment's leisure,
As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.
Look to't, I charge you; come your ways.
Oph. I shall obey, my lord.

SCENE IV. The Platform.

[Exeunt.

Enter HAMLET, HORATIO, and MARCELLUS. Ham. The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold1. Hor. It is a nipping and an eager2 air.

Ham. What hour now?

Hor.

I think it lacks of twelve.

21 i. e. "be more difficult of access, and let the suits to you for that purpose be of higher respect, than a command to parley." 22 Figuratively, with more license.

23 i. e. panders. The words brokage and broker were merely applied to love transactions, as they were to any other that took place by deputy. Words and vows being here spoken of as gobetweens, though delivered in person. Thus in A Lover's Complaint:

"Know vows are ever brokers to defiling."

24 The old copy has "pious bonds," which, although Mr. Collier retains it, is nonsense. Theobald gave the reading I adopt, which the context shows to be the true one.

' The folio absurdly prints, is it very cold? which Mr. Knight retains and defends.

2

Eager was used in the sense of the French aigre, sharp.

Mar. No, it is struck.

Hor. Indeed? I heard it not; it then draws near

the season,

Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.

[A Flourish of Trumpets, and Ordnance

What does this mean, my

shot off within.

lord?

4

Ham. The king doth wake to-night, and takes his rouse3, Keeps wassel, and the swaggering up-spring reels; And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down, The kettledrum and trumpet thus bray out The triumph of his pledge.

Hor.

Ham. Ay, marry,

is't:

Is it a custom ?

But to my mind,—though I am native here,

And to the manner born,-it is a custom

More honour'd in the breach, than the observance.
[This heavy-headed revel, east and west 5,
Makes us traduc'd, and tax'd of other nations:
They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase

3 Wake here evidently signifies a late revel. A wake originally was a nightly festival kept on the day of dedication of a church, vigilia: hence it came to signify any other night festival. To wake signified to revel at night. Vide Florio in voce Veggia. For rouse see note, p. 142, ante. To keep wassel was to devote the time to festivity. Vide Love's Labour's Lost, Act v. Sc. 2.

I take upspring here to mean nothing more than upstart. Steevens, from a passage in Chapman's Alphonsus, thought that it might mean a dance.

This and the following twenty-one lines are omitted in the folio. They had probably been omitted in representation, lest they should give offence to Anne of Denmark.

6 Clepe, call; clypian, Sax. The Danes were indeed proverbial as drunkards, and well they might be, according to the accounts of the time. "A lively French traveller, being asked what he had seen in Denmark, replied, Rien de singulier sinon qu'on y chante tous les jours le Roi boit,' alluding to the French mode of celebrating Twelfth Day." See De Brieux Origines de quelques Coutumes, p. 56. Heywood in his Philocothonista, or The Drunk

Soil our addition7; and, indeed it takes

From our achievements, though perform'd at height, The pith and marrow of our attribute.

So, oft it chances in particular men,

That, for some vicious mole of nature in them,
As, in their birth (wherein they are not guilty,
Since nature cannot choose his origin),
By the o'ergrowth of some complexion,
Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason;
Or by some habit, that too much o'erleavens
The form of plausive manners;—that these men,—
Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect;
Being nature's livery, or fortune's star9,-
Their virtues else (be they as pure as grace,
As infinite as man may undergo,)

Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault: The dram of base
Doth all the noble substance of a doubt 10,
To his own scandal.]

ard Opened, &c. 1635, 4to. speaking of what he calls the vinosity of nations, says of the Danes, that they have made a profession thereof from antiquity, and are the first upon record that brought their wassel bowls and elbowe deepe healthes into this land.”Douce. Roger Ascham, in one of his Letters, says, "The Emperor of Germany, who had his head in the glass five times as long as any of us, never drank less than a good quart at once of Rhenish wine." See also Howel's Letters, 8vo. 1726, p. 236. Muffet's Health's Improvement, 4to. 1635, p. 294. Harington's Nugæ Antiquæ, 8vo. 1804, vol. i. p. 349.

7 Soil our addition, i. e. characterize us by a swinish epithet.

8 Complexion for humour. By complexion our ancestors understood the constitutions or affections of the body. The quartos have," their o'ergrowth."

9 Fortune's star, has been thought to refer to the influence of the planet supposed to govern our birth, &c. But it may be questioned whether we should not read fortune's scar.

line the quarto has, "their virtues."

10 The quarto of 1604, reads:

"The dram of eale

Doth all the noble substance of a doubt."

In the next

The quarto of 1611 has ease instead of eale. It seems to me most probable that Shakespeare wrote: