contrasted with 'throw out,' and this may have been 'lay' or 'lodge.' The latter was the technical word used in Harsnet's Declaration, c. 12.

170, 171. heaven hath pleased... their minister. Compare Richard II, i. 2. 6, 7, and our note.

179. bloat, bloated. The participle termination -ed is often dropped from words which end in a dental. See iii. 1. 155, and Abbott, § 342.

180. mouse, a term of endearment. Compare Twelfth Night, i. 5. 69: 'Good my mouse of virtue, answer me;' and Love's Labour 's Lost, v. 2. 19: 'What's your dark meaning, mouse, of this light word?'

See also Beaumont and Fletcher, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, i. 1: 'I pr'ythee, mouse, be patient.' Muss,' corrupted from 'mouse,' occurs several times in Jonson's Every Man in his Humour, ii. 1.

181. reechy, dirty, as with smoke. Compare Coriolanus, ii. 1. 225: The kitchen malkin pins

Her richest lockram 'bout her reechy neck.'

In Much Ado about Nothing, iii. 3. 143, the quarto and folios read 'rechie painting,' and the word there should be printed 'reechy' and not 'reeky,' although the two are identical in meaning. In the present passage the word may have been suggested by 'bloat,' two lines before, which has also the meaning to cure herrings by hanging them in the smoke.'

182. paddling. Compare Winter's Tale, i. 2. 115:

But to be paddling palms and pinching fingers.'

183. to ravel out, to unravel, as a tangled skein or a piece of woven work. Compare Richard II, iv. 1. 228:

My weaved-up folly ?'

Must I ravel out

187. a paddock, a toad. See Macbeth, i. I. 9.

Ib. gib, tom-cat. 'Gib' is a contraction of Gilbert.' In Sherwood's English-French Dictionary, appended to Cotgrave, we find, 'A gibbe (or old male cat). Macou.' Graymalkin was the female cat. Compare 1 Henry IV, i. 2. 83: I am as melancholy as a gib cat,' and Chaucer's Romaunt of the Rose, 6207:

'Gibbe our cat,

That awaiteth mice and rattes to killen.'

The toad, bat, and cat were supposed to be familiars of witches, and acquainted with their mistresses' secrets.

188. concernings. See Measure for Measure, i. 1. 57:

We shall write to you

/ As time and our concernings shall importune.'

190-193. The reference must be to some fable in which an ape opened a basket containing live birds, then crept into it himself, and to try conclusions,' whether he could fly like them, jumped out and broke his neck. No one has yet found any such fable recorded elsewhere.

192. To try conclusions, to make experiments so as to see what the result will be. Compare Lucrece, 1160:

'That mother tries a merciless conclusion

Who, having two sweet babes, when death takes one,

Will slay the other and be nurse to none.'

And Antony and Cleopatra, v. 2. 358:

'She hath pursued conclusions infinite

Of easy ways to die.'

And Merchant of Venice, ii. 2. 39. Launcelot Gobbo, when he says 'I will try confusions with him,' means 'I will try conclusions.'

197. It does not appear how Hamlet had found out that he was to be sent to England. In iv. 3. 45, he affects to hear of the king's purpose for the first time.

199. There's is frequently used as here with a plural noun following, like 'il y a' in French. Compare v. 1. 28, and Twelfth Night, ii. 4. 96. 201. They. The nominative repeated for clearness, after an intervening parenthesis. See ii. 1. 84.

203. the sport. Compare King John, ii. 1. 396:

'Smacks it not something of the policy?'

Ib. enginer. Changed in the quarto of 1676 to the more modern form 'engineer.' Compare Troilus and Cressida, ii. 3. 8: 'Then there's Achilles, a rare enginer.' For a cognate form 'mutiner,' see note on iii. 4. 83. So we have 'pioner' for 'pioneer,' Othello, iii. 3. 346.

204. Hoist may be the participle either of the verb 'hoise' or 'hoist.' In the latter case it would be the common abbreviated form for the participles of verbs ending in a dental.

Ib. petar. So spelt in the quartos and by all editors to Johnson, who writes 'petard.' In Cotgrave we have Petart: A Petard, or Petarre; an Engine (made like a Bell, or Morter) wherewith strong gates are burst open.' 208. packing, contriving, plotting. 'Go pack with him, and And Taming of the Shrew, v. 1. 121.

Compare Titus Andronicus, iv. 2. 155: give the mother gold.'

There is of course a play upon the

other sense which the word has in 1 Henry IV, ii. 4. 328.

209. neighbour, neighbouring. So 'neighbour states,' Timon of Athens, iv. 3. 94.

213. to draw.

For the construction compare iii. 2. 312.

10. Whips.

ACT IV.

Scene I.

He,' which should govern the verb, is omitted. Compare iii. 1. 8. The folios however read ' He whips his Rapier out.'

II. brainish, imaginary, having no ground in fact. It does not occur again in Shakespeare.

13. The king uses the style royal 'us,' 'we.'

18. kept short, kept, as it were, tethered, under control; opposed to 'loose,' iv. 3. 2.

Ib. out of haunt, away from the haunts of men. Compare As You Like It, ii. 1. 15:

'This our life exempt from public haunt.'

22. divulging, being divulged.

25. ore.

In the English-French Dictionary appended to Cotgrave' ore' is confined to gold. In this passage the context shows that it is used of precious metal.

26. mineral is defined by Minsheu to be anything that growes in Mines, and containes mettals.' We should now say a vein or lode.

used in the sense of mine,' as in Hall's Satires, vi. 148:

'Shall it not be a wild fig in a wall

Or fired brimstone in a minerall?'

And Browne, Britannia's Pastorals, I. 2. 631:

Mineral' is also

'Some of the bloud by chance did downward fall,

And by a veine got to a minerall.'

40. To fill up the gap in the text, the words 'So haply slander,' were first inserted by Capell, who adopted Theobald's conjecture with a slight modification, reading 'So' for 'For.' Some such insertion is obviously required to complete the sense. The folios omit further lines 41-44, Whose whisper.. .. air. Malone read' So viperous slander,' and Mr. Staunton proposes Thus calumny.'

42. blank, mark, so called perhaps because it was painted white. Compare Winter's Tale, ii. 3. 5:

Out of the blank

And level of my brain.'

And Othello, iii. 4. 128:

Within the blank of his displeasure,'

where we should say 'within the range.'

44. woundless air, the invulnerable air, as in i. I. 145. Similarly viewless winds,' in Measure for Measure, iii. 1. 124.

Scene II.

3. But soft, omitted in the folios.

6. Compounded it with dust. So 2 Henry IV, iv. 5. 116: 'Only compound me with forgotten dust.'

12. of, by. See Macbeth, iii. 6. 27.

Ib. replication, reply. Used of echo, Julius Cæsar, i. 1. 51. In law it has the technical sense of 'the reply of the plaintiff in matters of fact to the defender's plea.' (Webster, s. v.)

15. countenance, favour. So in i. 3. 113, and v. I. 26, and Coriolanus, v. 6. 40: He waged me with his countenance.'

16. authorities, officers of authority.

17. like an ape. The quarto of 1603 has 'as an Ape doth nuttes,' which Staunton has introduced into the text, thus certainly made clearer.

22. a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear. This sentence, now become proverbial, like so many passages in Hamlet, is probably of Shakespeare's coinage.

26. The body is with the king, &c. Hamlet is talking nonsense designedly.

29. A thing of nothing, a thing of no value. Nares quotes Beaumont and Fletcher's Humorous Lieutenant, iv. 6:

'And though a thing of nothing, thy thing ever.'

The phrase is of frequent occurrence. cxliv. 4 (Prayer Book version).

We find 'a thing of nought,' Psalm

Ib. Hide fox, and all after. A children's game apparently, like All hid,' 'Hide-and-seek.' In Much Ado about Nothing, ii. 3. 44, Warburton has with great probability conjectured 'hid fox' for 'kid fox.'

Scene III.

21. Four, used here as in iii. 2. 108.

24. variable, various, as in iii. I. 172.

26-28. The king's exclamation and Hamlet's following speech are omitted in the folios.

27. hath eat. The same form of the participle is in Richard II, v. 5. 85. 34. nose, smell, as in Coriolanus, v. i. 28: Still to nose the offence.'

40. dearly, heartily.

42. With fiery quickness, with hot haste. These words are omitted in the quartos.

·

43. at help. For the phrase compare at friend,' Winter's Tale, v. 1. 140. In the next line the folios read at bent. Compare 'at foot' line 53.

44. tend, attend, wait, as in i. 3. 83.

53. at foot, at heel, close to his steps.

54. I'll have him hence. 57. at aught, at any value.

Compare iii. 3. 4.

At' is commonly used to signify price.

58. As, used in parenthetical expressions with the sense of for so.'

Compare iv. 7.157.

59. cicatrice. Here used in its proper sense of scar of a wound, as in Coriolanus, ii. I. 164: There will be large cicatrices to show the people, when he shall stand for his place.' It is used improperly in As You Like It, iii. 5. 23:

'Lean but upon a rush,

The cicatrice and capable impressure

Thy palm some moment keeps.'

60. free awe, awe still felt, though no longer enforced by the presence of Danish armies.

61. coldly set, treat with indifference, esteem slightly. 'Set' would not have been thus used had it not been familiar in the phrases 'set at nought,' 'set at a pin's fee,' &c.

62. process, procedure, action.

63. congruing. So the quartos. The folios have 'conjuring,' probably a misprint, although it yields a fair sense.

65. a hectic. We find this word used as a substantive in Cotgrave: 'Hectique: Sicke of an Hectick, or continuall Feauer.' This is the only paspage where it occurs in Shakespeare either as substantive or adjective.

67. For haps' Johnson conjectured' hopes.'

Ib. were ne'er begun. So the folios. The quartos will nere begin.'

Scene IV.

3. Craves. So the quartos. The folios read 'Claimes.'

6. in his eye, in his presence.

Cleopatra, ii. 2. 212:

Compare i. 2. 116, and Antony and

'Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,

So many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes.'

And Twelfth Night, ii. 2. 16: 'If it be worth stooping for, there it lies in your eye.'

8. softly, gently, slowly. Compare Baçon, Essay vi. p. 19: 'Like the going softly by one that cannot well see.'

9. Enter Hamlet, &c. This, with all the rest of the scene, is omitted in the folios.

Ib. powers, forces. 'Power' is also used in the singular with the same sense, as in Macbeth, iv. 3. 185.

14. old Norway. See i. 2. 28.

15. the main, the chief power.

See ii. 2. 56.

17. For the metre's sake Pope read 'speak it,' and Capell speak, sir.