There with fantastic garlands did the come, There With cherry lips and cheeks of damask roses, And fee the house made handfome: then she fung And Palamon was a tall young man. Newly dropt down rings the made She faw me, and straight fought the flood: I fav'd her She flipt away, and to the city made With fuch a cry, and fwiftnefs, that, believe me, I faw from far off cross her: one of them I knew to be your brother, where fhe ftaid, &c. A& 4. Mr. Seward very juftly obferves upon this paffage, the Aurora of Guido has not more ftrokes of the fame hand which drew his Bacchus and Ariadne,, than the fweet defcription of this pretty maiden's love-diftraction has to the like diftraction of Ophelia in Hamkt; that of Ophelia, ending in her death, is like the Ariadne, more moving; but the images here, like thofe in Aurora, are more numerous and equally exquifite in grace and beauty. May we not then pronounce, that either this is ShakeSpear's, or that Fletcher has here equall'd him in his very beft manner? Mr. Warburton peremptorily affures us, "the first act only of the Two Noble Kinfmen, was wrote by Shakespear, but in his worst manner." M 3 There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds Or like a creature native and indued Unto that element; but long it could not be, ACT V. SCENE I. Hamlet's Reflection on Yorick's Skull. Grave. A peftilence on him for a mad rogue, he pour'd a flaggon of Rhenifh on my head once: this fame fkull, Sir, was Sir Yorick's skull. the King's jefter. Ham. This ? Grave. Even that. at it. Ham. Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jeft, of moft excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thoufand times, and now how abhorr'd in my imagination is it? my gorge rifes Here hung thofe lips that I have kifs'd, I know not how oft; where be your gibes now, your jefts, your fongs, your flafhes of merriment, that were wont to fet the table in a roar? Not one now to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fall'n? Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour, to this complexion fhe muft come; make her laugh at that. SCENE II. Afpotlefs Virgin buried. (38) Lay her i'th'earth, And from her fair and unpolluted flesh Melancholy. This is mere madness, And thus awhile the fit will work on him; (39) When firft her golden couplets are difclos'd, Providence directs our Actions. (40) And that fhould teach us, There's a divinity that fhapes our ends, A Health (38) Lay her, &c.] An ingenious gentleman obferved to me, he thought it an overfight in Shakespear to refuse Ophilia all the rights of burial, as if fhe had drowned herself, when it is plain the was drowned by mere accident: the priest fays, "her death was doubtful, and that it would profane the fervice of the dead to fing a requiem in like manner to her as to peace-farted fouls. Ophelia was distracted, and not dying a natural death, but fuch a one as was in fome measure doubtful, I think, Shakespear may be juftified; it is plain however, Laertes thought it a very unfair manner of proceeding with his fifter. (39) When, &c.] Golden couplets means, her two young ones, fer doves feldom lay more than two eggs, and the young ones when firft difclos'd or hatch'd, are covered with a kind of yellow down when they are first batch'd, the female broods over them more carefully and fedulously than ever, as then they require moft foftering. This will fhew the exact beauty of the comparison. (40) And, &c.] This is a noble fentiment and worthy of Shakespear: in the Maid's Tragedy, there is the fame thought, but very meanly exprest; M 4 But A Health. (41) Give me the cup, And let the kettle to the trumpets fpeak, The cannons to the heavens, the heavens to earth. But they that are above Have ends in every thing. A& 5. (41) Give me, &c.] There is in the beginning of the play a pailage like this: No jocund health that Denmark drinks to-day, But the great cannon to the clouds fhall tell, And the King's roufe the heavens fhall bruit again, Shakespear keeps up the characters of the people where his fcene lies, and therefore dwells much on the Danish drinking: in another place he tells us : The King doth wake to-night, and takes his roufe, A cuftom, as Hamlet obferves in the fubfequent lines, greatly to the difcredit of their nation, and more honour'd in the breach than the obfervance. General TH General Obfervations. HE original story on which this play is built, may be found in Saxo Grammaticus the Danish historian. From thence Bellefore adopted it in his collection of novels, in feven volumes, which he began in 1564, and continued to publish through fucceeding years. From this work, The Hyftorie of Hamblert, quarto, bl. 1. was tranflated. I have hitherto met with no earlier edition of the play than one in the year 1604, though it must have been performed before that time, as I have feen a copy of Speght's edition of Chancer, which formerly belonged to Dr. Gabriel Harvey, (the antagonist of Nafb) who, in his own hand-writing, has, fet down the play, as a performance with which he was well acquainted in the year 1598. His words are thefe: "The younger fort take much delight in Shakespear's "Venus and Adonis; but his Lucrece, and his tragedy "of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke, have it in them to "please the wifer fort, 1598." In the books of the Stationers' Company, this play was entered by James Roberts, July 26, 1602, under the title of "A booke called The Revenge of Hamlett, Prince of Denmarke, as it was lately acted by the Lord Chamberlain his fervantes." In Eafward Hee, by G. Chapman, B. Jorfon, and T. Marfion, 1605, is a fling at the hero of this tragedy. A footman named Hamlet enters, and a tankard-bearer afks him-"'Sfoote, Hamlet, are you mad?" The following particulars, relative to the date of the piece, are borrowed from Dr. Farmer's Effay on the Learning of Shakespear, p. 85, 86, fecond edition. Greene, in the Epiftle prefixed to his Arcadia, hath a lash at fome vine glorious tragedians," and very plainly at Shakespear in particular." I leave all thefe to the mercy of their mother-tongue, that feed on M 5 nought |