Hor.

Well, sit we down,

And let us hear Bernardo speak of this.

Ber. Last night of all,

When yond same star that 's westward from the pole Had made his course to illume that part of heaven Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,

The bell then beating one,

Enter Ghost.

Mar. Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again!

Ber. In the same figure, like the King that's dead.
Mar. Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.
Ber. Looks it not like the King? mark it, Horatio.
Hor. Most like: it harrows me with fear and

wonder.

Ber. It would be spoke to.

Mar.

Question it, Horatio. Hor. What art thou that usurp'st this time of

night,

Together with that fair and warlike form

In which the majesty of buried Denmark

32 being parenthetical, or "Let us assail your ears, - which are so fortified against our story what we have seen for two nights," line 33 to this point being merely explanatory of story. Which construction does the present punctuation favor? The first folio has a comma after story.]

:

42. a scholar and could speak Latin, the only language that ghosts were supposed to understand, because it was in that language that priests exorcised them. [Horatio, however, addresses the Ghost in his own tongue, as he would have addressed the living King; apparently forgetting, in his "fear and wonder," the current notion just explained.]

45. [would be:

=

should be, ought to be. See Act III., sc. iii., 1. 75; also Macbeth, Act III., sc. i., l. 51.]

48. [Denmark the King of Denmark, as in sc. ii., 1. 69. See Norway, sc. ii., lines 28 and 35.]

Did sometimes march? by heaven I charge thee,

Hor. Stay! speak, speak! I charge thee, speak!

Mar. 'Tis gone, and will not answer.

50

[Exit Ghost

Ber. How now, Horatio! you tremble and look

pale:

Is not this something more than fantasy?

What think you on 't?

Hor. Before my God, I might not this believe Without the sensible and true avouch

Of mine own eyes.

Mar.

Is it not like the King?

Hor. As thou art to thyself:

Such was the very armour he had on
When he th' ambitious Norway combated;
So frown'd he once, when, in an angry parle,
He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.

'Tis strange.

60

Mar. Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,

49. sometimes in time past.

57. [avouch = attestation; an instance of that use of the verb as a noun in which the Elizabethans frequently indulged. Keats followed their example; in Endymion, Book I., we find "in blind amaze," and "with glad exclaim.". Find another instance of this usage, in the present scene.]

=

62. parle: loosely used as debate, in the sense of quarrel. 63. Polacks Poles. [The picturesque epithet sledded has given disproportionate trouble to some commentators. It seems merely to mean that the Poles commonly used sleds, and to be an incidental touch like Othello's "turban'd Turk."]

=

65. [jump just, which is used in the folios. See, also, Act V., sc. ii., 1. 380.]

With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch. Hor. In what particular thought to work I know not;

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 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.

That can I;
Our last king,

At least, the whisper goes so.
Whose image even but now appear'd to us,
Wa as, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
Thereto prick'd on by a most emulate pride,
Dared 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,

70

80

70. [Good now: explained by Dr. Johnson as “a gentle exclamation of entreaty." See Comedy of Errors, Act IV., sc. iv., 1. 22.1

72. [the subject: a collective noun, as in Measure for Measure, Act III., sc. ii., l. 145, and King Lear, Act IV., sc. vi., 1. 107.1

77. toward coming, in movement to-ward.

=

82. Fortinbras=fort en bras. Strong-i'-th'-arm now exists as a surname in the North of England.

83. [emulate

= loosely used for emulous.]

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

[Аст 1 thee,

Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same cov'nant,
And carriage of the article's design,

His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
Of unimproved mettle hot and full,

Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there
Shark'd up a list of lawless resolutes,
For food and diet, to some enterprise

That hath a stomach 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,

89. [seized of possessed of.]

90

100

93. [cov'nant: the reading of the folios, which Mr. White prefers on the ground that co-mart, the singular word given in the quartos, “implies a trading purpose not well suited to a royal combat for a province." With co-mart, the line may be read satisfactorily as a hexameter; with cov'nant it is a pentameter hypercatalectic, one syllable being slurred, perhaps the last of vanquisher, in which case as is strongly marked by the voice; perhaps the article, in which case by receives the stress.] 94. [carriage carrying out ]

98. [Shark'd up picked up as the shark takes his prey. eagerly and without distinction.]

100. [stomach: Caldecott observes that the word is "here put in an equivocal sense, importing both courage and appetite.” See Julius Cæsar, Act V., sc. i., l. 65. In the present instance the full meaning would be: "that which invites courage, and promises satisfaction to appetite."]

W

he source of this our watch and the chief Head Of this post-Haste and romage in the land.

Ber. I think it be no other but e'en so: Well may it sort that this portentous figure

Comes armed through our watch; so like the King 110
That was and is the question of these wars.
Hor. A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye.
In the most High and palmy state of Bome,
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
Upon whose inHuence Neptune's empire stands
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse:
And even the like precurse of fierce eyents,
As harbingers preceding still the fates
And prologue to the omen coming on,
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
Unto our climature and countrymen. -
But soft, behold! lo, where it comes again!

107. [romage = turmoil.]

[Lines 108-125 are omitted in the folios.]

Here a line or more has been lost. [The meaning doubtless was, that prodigies appeared in the sky; Hunter suggests, “In the heavens above strange portents did appear."]

123. omen: loosely used for that which the omen is supposed to foreshadow.

125. climature clime: the form for rhythm's sake; the thought suggested by the foregoing allusions to the powers of nature.