To his confine: and of the truth herein' MAR. It faded on the crowing of the cock.* Some say, that ever 'gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, Thiş bird of dawning fingeth all night long: And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;2 The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallow'd and so gracious is the time. HOR. So have I heard, and do in part believe it. But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad, It faded on the crowing of the cock.] This is a very ancient fuperftition. Philoftratus giving an account of the apparition of Achilles' shade to Apollonius Tyaneus, says that it vanished with a little glimmer as foon as the cock crowed. Vit. Apol. iv. 16. STEEVENS. Faded has here its original sense; it vanished. Vado, Lat. So, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, Book I. c. v. ft 15: "He stands amazed how he thence should fade." That our author uses the word in this sense, appears from the following lines: 3 - The morning cock crew loud; "And vanish'd from our fight." MALONE. dares stir abroad;] reads-can walk. STEEVENS. Thus the quarto. The folio Spirit was formerly used as a monofyllable: Sprite. The quarto, 1604, has-dare stir abroad. Perhaps Shakspeare wrote-no spirits dare stir abroad. The necessary correction was made in a late quarto of no authority, printed in 1637. MALONE. * No fairy takes,] No fairy Strikes with lameness or diseases. This fenfe of take is frequent in this author. JOHNSON. So, in The Merry Wives of Windfor: "And there he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle." STEEVENS. Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill : 4 MAR. Let's do't, I pray; and I this morning know Where we shall find him most convenient. 4 [Exeunt. - high eastern hill :) The old quarto has it better eaftward. WARBURTON. The fuperiority of the latter of these readings is not, to me at leaft, very apparent. I find the former used in Lingua, &c. 1607: "Yonder gilt eastern hills." Again, in Browne's Britannia's Pastorals, Book IV. Sat. iv. p. 75, edit. 1616. "And ere the sunne had clymb'd the eastern hils." Again, in Chapman's verfion of the thirteenth Book of Ho mer's Odyfley: - Ulyffes ftill "An eye directed to the eastern hill." Eastern and eastward, alike fignify toward the east. STEEVENS. SCENE II. The fame. A Room of State in the fame. Enter the King, Queen, HAMLET, POLONIUS, LAERTES, VOLTIMAND, CORNELIUS, Lords, and Attendants. KING. Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death The memory be green; and that it us befitted 5 5 wrote - and that it us befitted-] Perhaps our author elliptically - and us befitted i. e. and that it befitted us. STEEVENS. • With one auspicious, and one dropping eye;] Thus the folio. The quarto, with somewhat less of quaintness: With an auspicious and a dropping eye. The fame thought, however, occurs in The Winter's Tale: "She had one eye declined for the loss of her husband; another elevated that the oracle was fulfilled." After all, perhaps, we have here only the ancient proverbial phrafe-" To cry with one eye and laugh with the other," buckram'd by our author for the service of tragedy. See Ray's Collection, edit. 1768, p. 188. STEEVENS. Dropping in this line probably means depressed or cast downwards: an interpretation which is strongly supported by the With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage, Now follows, that you know, young Fortinbras,- passage already quoted from The Winter's Tale. It may, however, fignify weeping. "Dropping of the eyes" was a technical expreffion in our author's time.-" If the spring be wet with much fouth wind, the next summer will happen agues and blearness, dropping of the eyes, and pains of the bowels." Hopton's Concordance of Years, 8vo. 1616. Again, in Montaigne's Effaies, 1603: any man there with eyes dropping, or through age." MALONE. - they never faw crooked and stooping 7 Colleagued with this dream of his advantage,] The meaning is,-He goes to war so indiscreetly, and unprepared, that he has no allies to fupport him but a dream, with which he is colleagued or confederated. WARBURTON. Mr. Theobald in his Shakespeare Restored, proposed to readcollogued, but in his edition very properly adhered to the ancient copies. MALONE. This dream of his advantage (as Mr. Mason observes) means only "this imaginary advantage, which Fortinbras hoped to derive from the unfettled state of the kingdom." STEEVENS. His further gait herein; in that the levies, 9 COR. VOL. In that, and all things, will we show : our duty. KING. We doubt it nothing; heartily farewell. And now, Laertes, what's the news with you? Laertes, 8 - to fuppress His further gait herein,] Gate or gait is here used in the northern sense, for proceeding, passage; from the A. S. verb gae. A gate for a path, passage, or street, is still current in the north. So, in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, Act V. fc. ii: "Every fairy take his gait." HARRIS. PERCY. - more than the scope-] More is comprized in the general design of these articles, which you may explain in a more diffused and dilated style. JOHNSON. I - these dilated articles, &c.] i. e. the articles when dilated. MUSGRAVE. The poet should have written allows. Many writers fall into this error, when a plural noun immediately precedes the verb; as I have had occafion to observe in a note on a controverted passage in Love's Labour Loft. So, in Julius Cæfar : "The posture of your blows are yet unknown." Again, in Cymbeline : - and the approbation of those are wonderfully to extend him," &c. MALONE. Surely, all such defects in our author, were merely the errors of illiterate transcribers or printers. STEEVENS. |