SCENE changes to a more remote Part of the Platform. Re-enter Ghoft and HAMLET. Ham. Where wilt thou lead me? fpeak, I'll ge no further. Ghoft. Mark me. Ham. I will. Ghoft. My hour is almost come, When I to fulphurous and torinenting flames Ham. Alas, poor Choft! Ghoft. Pity me not, but lend thy ferious hearing To what I fhall unfold. Ham. Speak, I am bound to hear. Gheft. So art thou to revenge, when thou fhalt hear. Ham. What? Ghoft. I am thy father's Spirit; Doomed for a certain term to walk the night, (18) And, for the day, confined to faft in fires;] I once fufpected this expreffion-to fat in fires; because though fafting is often a part of penance injoined us by the churchdifcipline here on earth, yet I conceive it would be no great punishment for a fpirit, a being which requires no fuftenance, to faft. Mr Warburton has fince perfectly convinced me that the text is not to be difturbed, but that the expreffion is purely metaphorical. For it is the opinion of the religion here reprefented (ie. the Roman catholic) that fating purifies the foul here, as the fire does in the purgatory here alluded to; and that the foul must be purged either by fafting here, or by burning hereafter. This opinion Shakefpeare again hints at, where he makes Hamlet fay; He took my father grofly, full of bread. And we are to obferve, that it is a common faying of the Romish priests to their people, "If you won't faft here, you must faft in fire." 'Till the foul crimes, done in my days of nature, Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid To tell the fecrets of my prifon-house, I could a tale unfold, whofe lightest word To ears of flesh and blood; list, lift, oh lift! Ghoft. Revenge his foul and most unnatural mur- Ham. Murder! Ghoft. Murder most foul, as in the best it is; But this moft foul, ftrange, and unnatural. Ham. Hafte me to know it, that I, with wings As meditation or the thoughts of love, May fweep to my revenge. Ghoft. I find thee apt; [as fwift And duller shouldit thou be than the fat weed That roots itself in eafe on Lethe's wharf, Wouldst thou not ftir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear; Rankly abuted: but know, thou noble youth, Ham. Oh, my prophetic foul! my uncle? Ghoft. Ay, that inceftuous, that adulterate beast, With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts, (O wicked wit, and gifts, that have the power So to feduce!) won to his fhameful luft VOL. XII. D The will of my moft feeming-virtuous Queen. But virtue, as it never will be moved, Though lewdness court it in the shape of heaven; And prey on garbage----- But foft! methinks I fcent the morning air----- Thus was I, fleeping, by a brother's hand, (15) Unhouzzled, unanointed, unanealed;] The ghost, having recounted the procefs of his murder, proceeds to exaggerate the inhumanity and unnaturalnefs of the fact, from the cir cumftances in which he was surprised. But thefe, I find, have · No reckoning made, but fent to my account been ftumbling-blocks to our editors; and therefore I must amend and explain thefe three compound adjectives in their order Inftead of unbouzzled, we must restore unbeufeled, i. e. without the facrament taken, from the old Saxon word for the facrament, boufel. So our etymologifts, and Chaucer write it; and Spencer, accordingly, calls the facramental fire bouling fire. In the next place, unanointed is a fophiftication of the text; the old copies concur in reading disappointed. I corrected, unhoufeled, unappointed. i. no confeflion of fins made, no reconciliation to Heaven, no appointment of penance by the church. To this purpose Othello fpeaks to his wife, when he is upon the point of killing her; If you bethink yourself of any crime, Unreconciled as yet to Heaven and Grace, So, in Meafare for Mefore, when Ifabella brings word to Claudio that he is to be inftantiy executed, he urges bim to this neceffary duty; Therefore your best appointment make with speed, Unanealed, I agree to be the Poet's genuine word; but I must take the liberty to difpute Mr Pope's explication of it, viz. No knell tang. I don't pretend to know what gloffaries Mr Pope may have confulted and trufts to; but whatfoever they are, I am fure, their comment is very fingular in the word alledged. The adjective formed from kell, must have been unknelled or unknolled. So, in Macbeth ; Had I as many fons, as I have hairs, I would not with them to a fairer death; There is no rule in orthography for finking the kin the deflexion of any verb or compound formed from knell, and melting it into a vowel. What fenfe does unanealed then bear? Skinner, in his Lexicon of old and obfolete Englifh terms, tells us, that anealed is unclus, from the Teutonic Let not the royal bed of Denmark be [Exit. Ham. Ch, all you hoft of heaven! oh earth! what elfe? And fhall I couple hell? oh, hold my. heart----- prepofition an, and ole, i c. cil; fo that unanealed must confequently fignify unanointed, not having the extreme union. So the Poet's reading and explication being afcertained, he very finely makes his ghoft complain of thefe four dreadfuk hardships, that he had been dispatched out of life without receiving the bote, or facrament; without being reconciled to heaven and afolved; without the benefit of extreme unction; or without fo much as a confeffion made of his fins. The having no kell rung, I think, is not a point of equal confequence to any of thefe; efpecially if we confider, that the Romish church admits the efficacy of praying for the dead. (20) Yea, from the table of my memory I'll wipe away ail trivial fond records,] Afchylus, I remember, twice ufes this very metaphor; confidering the mind or memory as a tablet, or writing-bock, on which we are to engrave things worthy of remembrance: "Ην ἐγγράφε Σὺ μνήμοσιν. Δέλτοις φρενών. Prometh. Eumenid. |