And as the world were now but to begin, The ratifiers and props of every Ward; (60) Queen. How chearfully on the falfe trail they cry! [Noife within. Enter LAERTES, with a Party at the Door. King. The doors are broke. Laer. Where is this King? Sirs! ftand you all, without. All. No, let's come in. Laer. I pray you, give me leave. All. We will, we will. Laer, I thank you; keep the door. O thou vile King, give me my father. [Exeunt. Laer. That drop of blood that's calm, proclaims me bastard; Cries cuckold to my father; brands the harlot Even here, between the chaste and unfmirched brow Of my true mother. (60) The ratifiers and props of every word;] The whole te Dour of the context is fuficient to fhew, that this is a mif taken reading. What can antiquity and cuftom, being the props of words, have to do with the bufinefs in hand? or what idea is conveyed by it? Certainly, the Poct wrote; The ratifiers and props of every ward. The meffenger is complaining that the riotous head had overborne the King's officers; and then fubjoins, that antiquity and cuftom were forgot, which were the ratifiers and props of every ward, i. e. of every one of thofe fecurities that nature and law place about the perfon of a king. All this is ratiOral and confequential. Mr Iarbarton. King. What is the caufe, Laertes, Let him go, Gertrude; do not fear our person: That treason can but peep to what it would, Why are you thus incenfed? Let him go, Gertrude. Speak, man. Laer. Where is my father? King, Dead. Queen. But not by him. King. Let him demand his fill. Laer. How came he dead? I'll not be juggled with: (61) To hell, allegiance! vows to the blackest devil! Confcience and grace, to the profoundest pit! King. Who fhall stay you? Laer. My will, not all the world; (61) To hell, allegiance! vows, to the blockeft devil!] Laertes is a good character, but he is here in actual rebellion. Left, therefore, this character fhould feem to fanctify rebellion, inftead of putting into his mouth a reasonable defence of his proceedings, fuch as the right the subject has of shaking off oppreffion, the ufurpation, and the tyranny of the King, &c. Shakespeare gives him nothing but abfurd and blafphemous fentiments, fuch as tend only to infpire the audience with horror at the action. This conduct is exceeding nice. Where, in his plays, a circumstance of rebellion is founded on hiftory, or the agents of it infamous in their characters, there was no danger in the representation; but, as here, where the circumftance is fictitious, and the agent honourable, he could not be too cautious; for the jealoufy of the two reigns he wrote in, would not difpense with lefs exactnefs. Mr Warburton & And for my means, I'll husband them fo well, Kiug. Good Laertes, If you defire to know the certainty Of your dear father, is't writ in your revenge, That fweep-ftake you will draw both friend and Winner and lofer? Laer. None but his enemies. King. Will you know them then? [foe, Laer. To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my And, like the kind life-rendering pelican, Repaft them with my blood. King. Why, now you speak Like a good child, and a true gentleman. [A noife within.] "Let her come in." [arms, Enter OPHELIA, fantastically dreffed with firaws and flowers. O heat, dry up my brains! tears, feven times falt, Burn out the fenfe and virtue of mine eye! By Heaven, thy madness shall be paid with weight, 'Till our scale turn the beam. O rofe of May! Dear maid, kind fister, sweet Ophelia ! O heavens, is't poffible a young maid's wits Nature is fine in love; and, where 'tis fine, (62) (62) Nature is fine in love;] Mr Pope feems puzzled at this paffage, and therefore in both his editions fubjoins this conjecture. Perhaps, fays he, Nature is fire in love, and where 'tis fire, It fends fome precious inftance of itself After the thing it loves. Oph." They bore him bare-faced on the bier, dove!" Laer. Hadft thou thy wits, and didft perfuade It could not move thus. [revenge, Oph. You muft fing, down a-down, and you call him a-down-a. O how the wheel becomes it ! it is the falfe fteward that stole his master's daughter. After the thing it loves. I own, this conjecture to me imparts no fatisfactory idea. Nature is fuppofed to be the fire, and to furnish the incenfe too; had love been fuppofed the fire, and nature fent out the incenfe, I fhould more readily have been reconciled to the fentiment. But no change, in my opinion, is neceffary to the text; I conceive that this might be the Poet's meaning: "In the pallion of love, nature becomes more exquifite of fenfation, is more delicate and refined; that is, natural affection, raifed and fublimed into a love paffion, becomes more inflamed and intenfe than ufual: and where it is fo, as people in love generally fend what they have of moft valuable after their lovers; fo poor Ophelia has fent her most precious fenfes after the object of her inflamed affections." If I mistake not, our Poct has played with this thought, of the powers being re fined by this paflion, in feveral other of his plays. His clown, in As You Like it, feems fenfible of this refinement; but, talking in his own way, interprets it a fort of franticnefs. We, that are true lovers, run into ftrange capers; but as all is mortal in nature, fo is all nature in love mortal in folly. Again, in Troilus and Creffida, the latter expreffes herself concerning grief exactly as Laertes does here of nature: The grief is fine, full, perfect, that I taste; Which caufeth it. But lago, in Othello, delivers himfelf much more directly to the purpofe of the fentiment here before us: Come hither, if thou beeft valiant; as they fay, base men, being in love, have then a nobility in their natures more than is native to them. Laer. This nothing's more than matter. Oph. There's rofemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember; and there's panfies, that's for thoughts. Laer. A document in madnefs, thoughts and remembrance fitted. We Oph. There's fennel for you, and columbines; there's rue for you, and here's fome for me. may call it herb of grace o' Sundays: you may wear your rue with a difference. There's a daify; I would give you fome violets, but they withered all when my father died; they fay he made a good end; "For bonny fweet Robin is all my joy." Laer. Thought, and affliction, paffion, hell itself, She turns to favour, and to prettiness. Oph. "And will he not come again? "And will he not come again? "No, no, he is dead, go to thy death-bed, "He never will come again. "His beard was white as fnow, "All flaxen was his pole: "He is gone, he is gone,and we caft away mone, Gramercy on his foul!" And of all Chriftian fouls! God b'w'ye. Laer. Do you fee this, you God› ! [Exit Ophelia. King. Laertes, I must commune with your grief, Or you deny me right: go but a-part, Make choice of whom your wifeft friends you will, And they shall hear and judge 'twixt you and me; If by direct or by collateral hand They find us touched, we will our kingdom give, Our crown, our life, and all that we call ours, VOL. XII. M |