And, by opposing, end them?-To die,—to sleep",- For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, Shakspeare might have found the very phrase that he has employed, in The Tragedy of Queen Cordila, Mirrour for Magistrates, 1575, which undoubtedly he read : "For lacke of frendes to tell my seas of giltlesse smart." MALONE. Menander uses this very expression. Fragm. p. 22. Amstel. 12mo. 1719: Εις πελαγος αυτον εμβαλεις γαρ πραγμάτων. "In mare molestiarum te conjicies." HOLT WHite. A Spanish translator of Hamlet, Madrid, 1798, either from a wish to avoid this broken metaphor, or from misunderstanding the original, has supposed it to mean, raising up your arms as you would in swimming against a sea of troubles, ú oponer los brazos á este torrente de calamidades." BOSWELL. 66 3. To die,-to sleep,] This passage is ridiculed in The Scornful Lady of Beaumont and Fletcher, as follows: be deceased, that is, asleep, for so the word is taken. To sleep, to die; to die, to sleep; a very figure, sir," &c. &c. STEEVENS. shuffled off this mortal coIL,] i. e. turmoil, bustle. WARBURTON. A passage resembling this, occurs in a poem entitled A Dolfull Discours of Two Strangers, a Lady and a Knight, published by Churchyard, among his Chippes, 1575: "Yea, shaking off this sinfull soyle, 66 "Me thincke in cloudes I see, Among the perfite chosen lambs, "A place preparde for mee." STEEVENS. 5 There's the RESPECT,] i. e. the consideration. See Troilus and Cressida, Act II. Sc. II. MALONE. the whips and scorns OF TIME,] The evils here com The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely', The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay, plained of are not the product of time or duration simply, but of a corrupted age or manners. We may be sure, then, that Shakspeare wrote: the whips and scorns of th' time.' and the description of the evils of a corrupt age, which follows, confirms this emendation. WARBURTON. It may be remarked, that Hamlet, in his enumeration of miseries, forgets, whether properly or not, that he is a prince, and mentions many evils to which inferior stations only are exposed. JOHNSON. I think we might venture to read-'the whips and scorns o' the times,' i. e. times satirical as the age of Shakspeare, which probably furnished him with the idea. In the reigns of Elizabeth and James (particularly in the former) there was more illiberal private abuse and peevish satire published, than in any others I ever knew of, except the present one. I have many of these publications, which were almost all pointed at individuals. Daniel, in his Musophilus, 1599, has the same complaint : "Do you not see these pamphlets, libels, rhimes, 66 These strange confused tumults of the mind, "Are grown to be the sickness of these times, "The great disease inflicted on mankind? Whips and scorns are surely as inseparable companions, as publick punishment and infamy. Quips, the word which Dr. Johnson would introduce, is derived, by all etymologists, from whips. Hamlet is introduced as reasoning on a question of general concernment. He therefore takes in all such evils as could befall mankind in general, without considering himself at present as a prince, or wishing to avail himself of the few exemptions which high place might once have claimed. In Part of King James I'st. Entertainment passing to his Coronation, by Ben Jonson and Decker, is the following line, and note on that line: "And first account of years, of months, of time." By time we understand the present." This explanation affords the sense for which I have contended, and without change. STEEVENS. Time, for the times, is used by Jonson in Every Man out of His Humour: "Oh how I hate the monstrousness of time." So, in Basse's Sword and Buckler, 1602: The insolence of office, and the spurns *First folio, these fardels. "If I should touch particularly all "Wherein the moodie spleene of captious Time "Doth tax our functions.” So also, to give a prose instance, in Cardanus Comfort, translated by Thomas Bedingfield, 1576, we have a description of the miseries of life, strongly resembling that in the text: "Hunger, thurste, sleape not so plentiful or quiet as deade me have, heate in sommer, colde in winter, disorder of tyme, terroure of warres, controlement of parentes, cares of wedlocke, studye for children, slouthe of servauntes, contention of sules, and that (whiche is moste of all) the condicion of tyme wherein honestye is disdaynd, as folye and crafte is honoured as wisedome." BOSWELL. The word whips is used by Marston in his Satires, 1599, in the sense required here: 7 "Ingenuous melancholy, "Inthrone thee in my blood; let me entreat, 66 Stay his quick jocund skips, and force him run "A sad-pac'd course, untill my whips be done." Malone. the PROUD man's contumely,] Thus the quarto. The folio reads "the poor man's contumely;" the contumely which the poor man is obliged to endure: Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se, Quam quod ridiculos homines facit. MALONE. 8 - of DESPIS'D love,] The folio reads-of dispriz'd love. 9 - might his QUIETUS make STEEVENS. With a bare BODKIN?] The first expression probably alluded to the writ of discharge, which was formerly granted to those barons and knights who personally attended the king on any foreign expedition. This discharge was called a quietus. It is at this time the term for the acquittance which every sheriff receives on settling his accounts at the Exchequer. The word is used for the discharge of an account, by Webster, in his Duchess of Malfy, 1623: Again: "And 'cause you shall not come to me in debt, (Being now my steward) here upon your lips "I sign your quietus est.” "You had the trick in audit time to be sick, 9 To grunt and sweat under a weary life; But that the dread of something after death, 66 A bodkin was the ancient term for a small dagger, So, in the Second Part of The Mirrour for Knighthood, 4to. bl. 1. 1598: Not having any more weapons but a poor poynado, which usually he did weare about him, and taking it in his hand, delivered these speeches unto it. Thou, silly bodkin, shalt finish the piece of worke," &c. In the margin of Stowe's Chronicle, edit. 1614, it is said, that Cæsar was slain with bodkins; and in The Muses' Looking-Glass, by Randolph, 1638: Apho. A rapier's but a bodkin. "Deil. And a bodkin "Is a most dang'rous weapon; since I read Again, in The Custom of the Country, by Beaumont and Fletcher: 66 "Your pocket dagger, your stilletto-." Again, in Sapho and Phao, 1591: " there will be a des perate fray between two, made at all weapons, from the brown bill to the bodkin." Again, in Chaucer, as he is quoted at the end of a pamphlet called The Serpent of Division, &c. whereunto is annexed the Tragedy of Gorboduc, &c. 1591 : "With bodkins was Cæsar Julius “Murdered at Rome of Brutus Crassus." STEEVENS. By" a bare bodkin," does not perhaps mean," by so little an instrument as a dagger," but " by an unsheathed dagger." In the account which Mr. Steevens has given of the original meaning of the term quietus, after the words, "who personally attended the king on any foreign expedition," should have been added, and were therefore exempted from the claims of scutage, or a tax on every knight's fee.' MALONE. 9 TO GRUNT and sweat-] Thus the old copies. It is undoubtedly the true reading, but can scarcely be borne by modern ears. JOHNSON. This word occurs in The Death of Zoroas, by Nicholas Grimoald, a translation of a passage in the Alexandreis of Philippe Gualtier, into blank verse, printed at the end of Lord Surrey's Poems : "Here grunts, here grones, echwhere strong youth is spent." And Stanyhurst, in his translation of Virgil, 1582, for supremum congemuit, gives us; " for sighing it grunts." Again, The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn in Turbervile's translation of Ovid's Epistle from Canace to Ma careus; "What might I miser do? greefe forst me grunt." Again, in the same translator's Hypermnestra to Lynceus: round about I heard 66 "Of dying men the grunts." The change made by the editors [to groan] is however supported by the following line in Julius Cæsar, Act IV. Sc. I.: "To groan and sweat under the business." STEEVENS. I apprehend that it is the duty of an editor to exhibit what his author wrote, and not to substitute what may appear to the present age preferable: and Dr. Johnson was of the same opinion. See his note on the word hugger-mugger, Act IV. Sc. V. I have therefore, though with some reluctance, adhered to the old copies, however unpleasing this word may be to the ear. stage, without doubt, an actor is at liberty to substitute a less offensive word. To the ears of our ancestors it probably conveyed no unpleasing sound; for we find it used by Chaucer and others: "But never gront he at no stroke but on, "Or elles at two, but if his storie lie." On the The Monkes Tale, v. 14,627, Tyrwhitt's edit. Again, in Wily Beguil'd, written before 1596: "She's never well, but grunting in a corner." MALONE. I The UNDISCOVER'D Country, from whose bourn NO TRAVELLER returns,] This has been cavilled at by Lord Orrery and others, but without reason. The idea of a traveller in Shakspeare's time, was of a person who gave an account of his adventures. Every voyage was a Discovery. John Taylor has "A Discovery by Sea from London to Salisbury." FARMER. Again, Marston's Insatiate Countess, 1603: 66 wrestled with death, "From whose stern cave none tracks a backward path." Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum Illuc unde negant redire quenquam. Catullus. Again, in Sandford's translation of Cornelius Agrippa, &c. 4to. bl. I. 1569 (once a book of uncommon popularity) : The coun trie of the dead is irremeable, that they cannot retourne." Sig. P p. Again, in Cymbeline, says the Gaoler to Posthumus: "How you shall speed in your journey's end [after execution] I think you'll never return to tell one." STEEVENS. This passage has been objected to by others on a ground which, at the first view of it, seems more plausible. Hamlet himself, it is objected, has had ocular demonstration that travellers do sometimes return from this strange country. |