Enter HAMLET.

Ham. To be, or not to be? that is the question.-Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to fuffer The flings and arrows of outrageous fortune; Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, (33)

(33) Cr to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by oppofing end them?] I once imagined, that, to preferve the uniformity of metaphor, and as it is a word our Author is fond of ufing elsewhere, he might have wrote;a jiege of troubles.

So, in Mifummer Night's Dream ;

Or, if there were a fympathy in choice,

War, death, or sickness did lay fiege to it. King Tobn;

Death, having preyed upon the outward parts, Leaves them, invifible his fiege is now, &c. Romeo and Juliet ;

You, to remove that siege of grief from her, Betrothed, and would have married her, &c. Timon of Athens ;

Not even Nature,

To whom all forès lay fiege, can bear great fortune
But by contempt of nature.

Or one might conjecturally amend the paffage, nearer ta the traces of the text, thus;

Or,

Or to take arms against th' affay of troubles,

-against a 'fay of troubles;

i. e. again the attempts, attacks, &c. So, before, in this

play;

Makes vow before his uncle, never more

To give the offay of arms against your majesty,

Henry V.

Galling the gleaned land with hot offays.

Macbeth;

-their malady convinces

The great day of art.

Lear;

And that thy tongue fome 'fay of breeding breathes, &c. &c.

But, perhaps, any correction whatever may be unnecessary,

And by oppofing end them?---to die,--to fleep-----
No more; and by a fleep, to fay, we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural flocks
That flesh is heir to; 'tis a confummation
Devoutly to be wilhed. To die --to fleep(34)

confidering the great licentioufnefs of our Poet in joining heterogeneous metaphors; and confidering too, that a jea is ufed not only to fignify the ocean, but likewife a vast quantity, multitude, or confluence of any thing elfe. Inftances are thick both in facred and profane writers. The prophet Jeremiah, particularly, in one pailage, calls a prodigious arny coming up against a city, a fea; chop. li 42. "The frais come up upon Babylon; fhe is covered with the multitude of the waves thereof." Efchylus is frequent in the ufe of this metaphor;

Box yap xvμx xεpoaïov spati. Sep. cont. Thebas, v. 63. And again, a little lower;

Κύμα γὰρ περὶ πόλιν

Δοχμολή των ανδρων

Καχλάζει πονοκῖς
*Αρεος ὀρόμενον.

And again, in his Perfians;

Δόκιμος δ' στις ὑποτὰς
Μεγάλη ρεύματι φωτῶν,
Εχυροῖς ἔρχεσιν είργειν

"Αμαχον καμα θαλάσσης.

Ibid. v. 116.

So Ciciro, in one of his letters to Atticus, lib. vii. Ep. 4. Fluctum enim totius Barbaria ferie urbs was non poterat. And, befides, a fea of troubles among the Greeks grew into prover bial ufage; κακῶν θάλασσα, κακῶν τρικυμία. So that the expreffion, figuratively, means the troubles of human life, which flow in upon us, and encompass us round like a fut. Our Poet too has employed this metaphor in his Antony, fpeaking of a confluence of courtiers;

I was of late as petty to his ends,

As is the morn-dew on the myrtle leaf

To his grand fea.

The fame image and expreffion, Iobferve, is ufed by Beaumont and Fletcher, in their Two Noble Kinjmen;

Though I know,

His ocean needs not my poor drops, yet they
Muft yield their tribute there.

(34)

-To die, to fleep;

G ;

To fleep? perchance, to dream, av, there's the rub
For in that fleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have fhuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of fo long life.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppreffor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pang of despised love, the law's delay,
The infolence of office, and the fpurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes ;
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardles bear,.
To and sweat under a weary
groan

life?

But that the dread of fomething after death, (That undiscovered country, from whose bourne (35)

To fleep? perchance, to dream:] This admirable fine reflection feems, in a paltry manner, to be fneered at by Beaumont and Fletcher, in their Scornful Lady;

Rg. Have patience, Sir, until our fellow Nicholas be de ceafed, that is, afleep; to fleep, to die; to die, to fleep; a very figure, Sir.

(35) That undiscovered country, from whose bourne

No traveller returns,] As fome fuperficial critics have, without the leaft. fcruple, accufed the Poet of forgetfulnes and felf-contradiction from this paslage; seeing that in this very play he introduces a character from the other world, the ghost of Hamlet's father; I have thought this circumfance worthy of a juftification. 'Tis certain, to intoduce a ghoft, a being from the other world, and to say, that no traveller returns from thofe confines is, literally taken, as abfolute a contradiction as can be fuppofed et fato et termi

nis.

But we are to take notice, that Shakespeare brings his ghoft only from a middle ftate, or local purgatory, a prifonhoufe, as he makes his fpirit call it, where he was doomed for a term only, to expiate his fins of nature. By the undifcovered country here mentioned, he may, perhaps, mean that la and eternal refidence of fouls in a state of full blifs or mifery, which fpirits in a middle ftate could not be acquainted with, or explain. So that if any latitude of fenfe may be allowed

No traveller returns) puzzles the will;
And makes us rather bear thofe ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of.
Thus confcience does make cowards of us all:
And thus the native hue of refolution
Is ficklied o'er with the pale calt of thought;
And enterprizes of great pith and moment,
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lofe the name of action--Soft you, now!
[Seeing Ophelia.
The fair Ophelia? Nymph, in thy orifons
Be all my fins remembered.
Oph. Good my Lord,

How does your honour for this many a-day?
Ham. I humbly thank you, well;--

to the Poet's words, though he admits the poffibility of a fpirit returning from the dead, he yet holds, that the ftate of the dead cannot be communicated; and, with that allow ance, it remains still an undifovered country. We are to obferve too, that even his ghoft, who comes from purgatory, or whatever has been fignified under that denomination) comes under reftrictions; and though he confeiles himself fubject to a viciffitude of torments, yet he fays, at the fame time, that he is forbid to tell the fecrets of his prifon-house. The ancients had the fame notion of our obfcure and twi

light knowledge of an after being. Valerius Flaccus, I remember, (if I may be indulged in a thort digreflion) speak ing of the lower regions, and state of the tpirits there, has an expreffion, which, in one fenfe, comes clofe to our Author's und fovered country;

-Superis incognita tellus.

And it is obfervable that Virgil, before he enters upon à defcription of Hell, and of the Elylian Fields, implores the permiffion of the infernal deities, and profefies, even then, to difcover no more than hearfay concerning their mysterious dominions:

Dii, quibus imperium eft animarum, umbræque filentes,
Et Chaos, et Phlegethon, loca nocte tacentia late,
Sit mihi fas auaita loqui, fit numine veftro
Pandere res alta terra et caligine merjas.

Eneid. VI,

Oph. My Lord, I have remembrances of yours, That I have longed long to re-deliver. I pray you, now receive them.

Ham. No, I never gave you aught. [you did; Oph. My honoured Lord, you know right well, And with them words of fo fweet breath compofed, As made the things more rich: that perfume loft, Take these again; for to the noble mind

Rich gifts wax poor, when givers prove unkind.
There, my Lord.

Ham. Ha, ha! are you honeft?
Oph. My Lord----

Ham. Are you fair?

Oph. What means your Lordship?

Ham. That if you be honest and fair, you should admit no discourse to your beaùty.

Oph. Could beauty, my Lord, have better commerce than with honesty?

Ham. Ay, truly; (36) for the power of beauty will fooner transform honefty from what it is to a bawd, than the force of honefty can tranflate beauty into its likeness. This was fometime a pa

(36) Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will fooner transform ho ejiy from what it is to a bawd, &c.] Our Author has twice before, in his As you like it, played with a fentiment bordering upon this;

Celia. 'Tis true, for thofe that the makes fair, the fearce makes honeft; and thofe that he makes honest, the makes very ill-favoured.

And again;

Audr. Would you not have me honeft?

Clown. No truly, unlefs thou wert hard favoured; for benefly, coupled to beauty, is to have honey a fauce to fugar. The foundation of both paflages may pellibly have been

of claffical extraction:

Lis eft cum forma magna pudicitia

-Rara eft a leo concoraia forme

Aue pudicitia.

Ovid.

Juvenal.