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must be too obvious to every reader, to require any explanation. MALONE.

P. 69, 1. 19. your only jig-maker.] There may have been some humour in this passage, the force of which is now diminished:

many gentlemen

"Are not, as in the days of understand

ing,

"Now satisfied without a jig, which since "They cannot, with their honour, call for after

"The play, they look to be serv'd up in
the middle."

Changes, or Love in a Maze, by
Shirley, 1652.

In The Hog hath lost his Pearl, 1614, one of the players comes to solicit a gentleman to write a jig for him. A jig was not in Shakspeare's time only a dance, but a ludicrous dialogue in metre, and of the lowest kind, like Hamlet's conversation with Ophelia. Many of these jiggs are entered in the books of the Stationers' Company: "Philips his Jigg of the slyppers, 1595. Kempe's Jigg of the Kitchen-stuff-woman, 1595." STEEVENS.

A jig was not always in the form of a dialogue. Many historical ballads were formerly called jigs. MALONE.

A jig, though it signified a ludicrous dialogue in metre, yet it also was used for a dance. RITSON.

P. 69, 1. 24. 25. Nay, then let the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of sables.] The conceit of these words is not taken. They are an ironical apology for his mother's cheerful looks: two months was long enough in conscience to make any dead husband forgotten. But the editors in their nonsensical blunder, have made Hamlet say

just the contrary. That the devil and he would both go into mourning, though his mother did not. The true reading is Nay, then let the devil wear black, 'fore I'll have a suit of sable. 'Fore, i. e. before. As much as to say,- Let the devil wear black for me, I'll have none. The Oxford editor despises an emendation so easy, and reads it thus, Nay, then let the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of ermine. And you could expect no less, when such a critick had the dressing of him. But the blunder was a pleasant one. The senseless editors had wrote sables, the fur so called, for sable, black. And the critick. only changed this fur for that; by a like figure, the common people say,' You rejoice the cockles of my heart, for the muscles of my heart; an unlucky mistake of one shell-fish for another. WARBURTON.

I know not why our editors should with such implacable anger persecute their predecessors. Oi νεκροί μὴ δάκνουσιν, the dead, it is true, can make no resistance, they may be attacked with great security; but since they can neither feel nor mend, the safety of mauling them seems greater than the pleasure; nor perhaps would it much huisbeseem us to remember, amidst our triumphs over the nonsensical and senseless, that we likewise are men; that debemur morti, and as Swift observed to Burnet, shall soon be among the dead ourselves.

I cannot find how the common reading is nonsense, nor why Hamlet, when he laid aside his dress of mourning, in a country where it was bitter cold, and the air was nipping and eager, should not have a suit of sables. I suppose it is

well enough known, that the fur of sables is not black. JOHNSON.

A suit of sables was the richest dress that could be worn in Denmark. Steevens.

Here again is an equivoque. In Massinger's Old Law, we have,

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A cunning grief,

"That's only faced with sables for a show, "But gawdy-hearted. FARMER.

Nay then, says Hamlet, if my father be so long dead as you say, let the devil wear black; as for me, so far from wearing a mourning dress, I'll wear the most costly and magnificent suit that can be procured; a suit trimmed with sables.

Our poet fournished Hamlet with a suit of sables on the present occasion, not as I conceive, be cause such a dress was suited to "a country where it was bitter cold, and the air was nipping and eager," (as Dr. Johnson supposed,) nor because "a suit of sables was the richest dress that could be worn in Denmark," (as Mr. Steevens had suggested,) of which probably he had no knowledge, but because a suit trimmed with sables was in Shakspeare's time the richest dress worn by men in England. We have had again and again occasion to observe, that, wherever his scene might happen to be, the customs of his own country were still in his thoughts,

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By the statute of apparel, 24 Henry VIII, c. 15, (article furres,) it is ordained, that none under the degree of an earl may use sables..

Bishop says in bis Blossoms, 1577, speaking of the extravagance of those times, that a thousand ducates were sometimes given for "a face of 2bles."

That a suit of sables was the magnificent dress of our author's time, appears from a passage in Ben Jonson's Discoveries: "Would you not laugh to meet a great counsellor of state, in a flat cap, with his trunk-hose, and a hobby-horse cloak, and yond haberdasher in a velvet gown trimm'd with sables?"

Florio in his Italian Dictionary, 1598, thus explaius zibilini: "The rich furre called sables." ·Sables is the skin of the sable Martin.

MALONE.

P. 6g, 1. 28. 29. he must build churches then: Such benefactors to society were sure to be recorded by means of the feast-day on which the patron saints and founders of churches were commemorated in every parish. This custom having been long disused, the names of the builders of sacred edifices are no longer known to the vulgar, and are preserved only in antiquarian memoirs. STEEVENS.

P. 69, 1. 30. the hobby-horse;] Amongst the country May-games there was an hobby-horse, which, when the puritannical humour of those times opposed and discredited these games, was brought by the poets and ballad-makers as an instance of the ridiculous zeal of the sectaries: from these ballads Hamlet quotes a line or two.

WARBURTON.

P. 69, 1. 31. For, 0, for, 0, the hobby-horse it forgot.] In Love's Labour's Lost, this line is also introduced. In a small black letter book, entitled, Plays Confuted, by Stephen Gosson, I find the hobby-horse enumerated in the list of dances. STEEVENS.

P. 70, 1. 16. this is miching mallecho: it means mischief.]. To mich signified, originally,

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to keep hid and out of sight; and, as such men generally did it for the purposes of lying in wait, it then signified to rob. And in this sense Shakspeare uses the noun, a micher, when speaking of Prince Henry amongst a gang of robbers. Shall the blessed sun of heaven prove a micher? Shall the son of England prove a thief? And in this sense it is used by Chaucer, in his translation of Le Roman de la Rose, where he turns the word lierre, (which is larron, voleur,) by micher.

WARBURTON.

The word miching is daily used in the West of England for playing truant, or sculking about in private for some sinister purpose; and malicho, inaccurately written for malheco, signifies mischief; so that miching malicho is mischief on the watch for opportunity. When Ophelia asks Hamlet "What means this?" she applies to him for an explanation of what she had not seen in the show; and not, as Dr. Warburton would have it, the purpose for which the show was contrived. Besides, malhechor no more signi→ fies a poisoner, than a perpetrator of any other crime. HENLEY.

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A secret and wicked contrivance; a concealed wickedness. To mich is a provincial word, and was probably once general, signifying to lie hid, or play the truant. In Norfolk michers signify pilferers. The signification of miching in the present passage may be ascertained by a passage in Decker's Wonderful Yeare, 4to. 1603: "Those that could shift for a time, - went most bitterly miching and muffled, up and downe, with rue and wormwood stuft into their ears and nostrils."

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MALONE.

P. 70, 1, 25. Be not you ashamed to show,]

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