And prologue to the omen coming on,'- I rather believe that fierce fignifies conspicuous, glaring. It is used in a somewhat fimilar sense in Timon of Athens: "O the fierce wretchedness that glory brings!" Again, in King Henry VIII. we have " fierce vanities." STEEVENS. * And prologue to the omen coming on,] But prologue and omen are merely synonymous here. The poet means, that these strange phenomena are prologues and forerunners of the events prefag'd: and such sense the flight alteration which I have ven, tured to make, by changing omen to omen'd, very aptly gives. Omen, for fate. WARBURTON. Hanmer follows Theobald. THEOBALD. A diftich from the life of Merlin, by Heywood, however, will thow that there is no occafion for correction : "Merlin well vers'd in many a hidden spell, "His countries omen did long since foretell." FARMER, Again, in The Vowbreaker : "And much I fear the weakness of her brainę Omen, I believe, is danger. STEEVENS. And even the like precurse of fierce events, As harbingers preceding still the fates, And prologue to the omen coming on,] So, in one of our au thor's poems: "But thou shrieking harbinger "Foul precurrer of the fiend, "Augur of the feyer's end," &c. The omen coming on is, the approaching dreadful and porten tous event. So, in King Richard III : "Thy name is ominous to children." i. e. (not boding ill fortune, but) destructive to children. Again, ibidem: "O Pomfret, Pomfret, O, thou bloody prifon, "Fatal and ominous to noble peers." MALONE. Re-enter Ghoft. But, soft; behold! lo, where it comes again ! Speak to me : If there be any good thing to be done, If thou art privy to thy country's fate, Or, if thou haft uphoarded 3 in thy life HOR. Do, if it will not stand.4 BER. HOR. 'Tis here! 'Tis here! * If thou hast any found,] The speech of Horatio to the spectre is very elegant and noble, and congruous to the common traditions of the caufes of apparitions. JOHNSON. 3 Or, if thou hast uphoarded &c.] So, in Decker's Knight's Conjuring, &c. " - If any of them had bound the spirit of gold by any charmes in caves, or in iron fetters under the ground, they should for their own foules quiet (which questionlesse elfe would whine up and down) if not for the good of their children, release it." STEEVENS. 4 -Stop it, Marcellus. Hor. Do, if it will not stand.] I am unwilling to suppose that Shakspeare could appropriate these absurd effusions to Horatio, who is a scholar, and has fufficiently proved his good unMAR. 'Tis gone! We do it wrong, being so majestical, For it is, as the air, invulnerable, 5 And our vain blows malicious mockery. [Exit Ghoft. BER. It was about to speak, when the cock crew. Hor. And then it started like a guilty thing Upon a fearful fummons. I have heard, derstanding by the propriety of his addresses to the phantom. Such a man therefore must have known that "As easy might he the intrenchant air as commit any act of violence on the royal shadow. The words -Stop it, Marcellus. and Do, if it will not stand-better fuit the next speaker, Bernardo, who, in the true spirit of an unlettered officer, nihil non arroget armis. Perhaps the first idea that occurs to a man of this description, is to strike at what offends him. Nicholas Pouffin, in his celebrated picture of the Crucifixion, has introduced a fimilar occurrence. While lots are cafting for the sacred vesture, the graves are giving up their dead. This prodigy is perceived by one of the foldiers, who instantly grafps his sword, as if preparing to defend himself, or resent fuch an invafion from the other world. The two next fpeeches-'Tis here!-Tis here!-may be allotted to Marcellus and Bernardo; and the third-Tis gone ! &c. to Horatio, whose superiority of character indeed seems to demand it.-As the text now ftands, Marcellus proposes to strike the Ghoft with his partizan, and yet afterwards is made to descant on the indecorum and impotence of such an attempt. The names of speakers have so often been confounded by the first publishers of our author, that I suggest this change with less hesitation than I should express concerning any conjecture that could operate to the disadvantage of his words or meaning.-Had the affignment of the old copies been fuch, would it have been thought liable to objection? STEEVENS. 5 -it is, as the air, invulnerable,] So, in Macbeth: As easy may'st thou the intrenchant air "With thy keen sword impress." Again, in King John : "Against the invulnerable clouds of heaven." MALONE. The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn, • The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,] So, the quarto, 1604. Folio-to the day. In England's Parnassus, 8vo. 1600, I find the two following lines ascribed to Drayton, but know not in which of his poems they are found: "And now the cocke, the morning's trumpeter, Mr. Gray has imitated our poet: "The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, MALONE. Our Cambridge poet was more immediately indebted to Philips's Cider, B. I. 753: "When Chanticleer, with clarion Shrill, recalls Thus alfo, Spenser, in his Fairy Queen, B. I. c. ii. f. 1: STEEVENS. Whether in Sea, &c.] According to the pneumatology of that time, every element was inhabited by its peculiar order of spirits, who had difpofitions different, according to their various places of abode. The meaning therefore is, that all spirits extravagant, wandering out of their element, whether aërial spirits visiting earth, or earthly spirits ranging the air, return to their station, to their proper limits in which they are confined. We might read: 66 And at his warning "Th' extravagant and erring spirit hies But this change, though it would smooth the conftruction, is not neceffary, and, being unneceffary, should not be made againft authority. JOHNSON. A Chorus in Andreini's drama, called Adamo, written in 1613, confifts of spirits of fire, air, water, and hell, or fubterraneous, being the exiled angels. "Choro di Spiriti ignei, aerei, acquatici, ed infernali," &c. These are the demons to which Shakspeare alludes.These spirits were supposed to controul the elements in which they respectively resided; and when formally invoked or commanded by a magician, to produce tempefts, con : 1 The extravagant & and erring spirit 9 hies flagrations, floods, and earthquakes. For thus says The Spanish Mandeville of Miracles, &c. 1600: "Those which are in the middle region of the ayre, and those that are under them nearer the earth, are those, which sometimes out of the ordinary operation of nature doe moove the windes with greater fury than they are accustomed; and do, out of season, congeele the cloudes, caufing it to thunder, lighten, hayle, and to destroy the graffe, corne, &c. &c. Witches and negromancers worke many such like things by the help of those spirits," &c. Ibid. Of this school therefore was Shakspeare's Profpero in The Tempest. T. WARTON. Bourne of Newcastle, in his Antiquities of the common People, informs us, "It is a received tradition among the vulgar, that at the time of cock-crowing, the midnight spirits forsake these lower regions, and go to their proper places.-Hence it is, (says he) that in country places, where the way of life requires more early labour, they always go chearfully to work at that time; whereas if they are called abroad fooner, they imagine every thing they see a wandering ghoft." And he quotes on this ocсаfion, as all his predeceffors had done, the well-known lines from the first hymn of Prudentius. I know not whose tranflation he gives us, but there is an old one by Heywood. The pious chansons, the hymns and carrols, which Shakspeare mentions presently, were usually copied from the elder Christian poets. * The extravagant-] i. e. got out of his bounds. FARMER. WARBURTON. So, in Nobody and Somebody, 1598:" - they took me up for a 'Stravagant." Shakspeare imputes the fame effect to Aurora's harbinger in the last scene of the third Act of the Midsummer Night's Dream. See Vol. IV. p. 432, n. 9. STEEVENS 9 -erring spirit,] Erring is here used in the sense of wandering. Thus, in Chapman's version of the fourth Book of Homer's Oduffey, Telemachus calls Ulyffes " My erring father:-" And in the ninth Book, Ulyffes describing himself and his com panions to the Cyclop, fays Erring Grecians we, "From Troy were turning homewards-" Erring, in short, is erraticus. STEEVENS. |