Whom I will truft, as I will adders fang'd',- Hoift with his own petar: and it fhall go hard, I'll lug the guts 3 into the neighbour room :- [Exeunt feverally; Hamlet dragging in Polonius. -adders fang'd,] That is, adders with their fangs, or poifoncus teeth, undrawn. It has been the practice of mountebanks to boast the efficacy of their antidotes by playing with vipers, but they firft difabled their fangs. JOHNSON. 2 Hoift, &c.] Hoift for boifed; as paft for paffed. STEEVENS. When in one line two crafts directly meet.] Still alluding to a countermine. MALONE. 3 the guts] The word guts was not anciently fo offenfive to delicacy as it is at prefent; but was ufed by Lylly (who made the first attempt to polish our language) in his ferious compofitions. So, in his Mydas, 1592: "Could not the treasure of Phrygia, nor the tributes of Greece, nor mountains in the Eaft, whofe guts are gold, fatisfy thy mind?" In short, guts was used where we now ufe enarails. Stanyburt often has it in his tranflation of Virgil, 1582: Pectoribus inhians fpirantia confulit exta. "She weens her fortune by guts hoate fmoakye to confter." STEEVENS. 4 Come, fir, to draw toward an end with you :] Shakspeare has been unfortunate in his management of the story of this play, the most ftriking circumftances of which arife fo early in its formation, as not to leave him room for a conclufion suitable to the importance of its beginning. After this laft interview with the Gift, the character of Hamlet has loft all its confequence. STEEVENS. ACT ACT IVS. SCENE I. The fame. Enter King, Queen, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDEN STERN. King. There's matter in these fighs; these profound heaves You must tranflate: 'tis fit we understand them: Where is your fon? Queen. Bestow this place on us a little while ".[to Rof. and Guil. who go out. Ah, my good lord 7, what have I feen to-night? King. What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet? Queen. Mad as the fea, and wind, when both contend Which is the mightier: In his lawless fit, Behind the arras hearing fomething ftir, He whips his rapier out, and cries, A rat! a rat! And, in this brainifh apprehenfion, kills The unfeen good old man. King. O heavy deed! It had been fo with us, had we been there : His liberty is full of threats to all; To you yourself, to us, to every one. Alas! how fhall this bloody deed be answer❜d? Should have kept short, reftrain'd, and out of haunt, This 5 A& IV.] This play is printed in the old editions without any feparation of the acts. The divifion is modern and arbitrary; and is here not very happy, for the paufe is made at a time when there is more continuity of action than in almost any other of the scenes. JOHNS. Befow this place on us a little while.] This line is wanting in the folio. STEEVENS. 7 my good lord,] The quartos read-mine own lord. STEEVENS. Mad as the fea, and wind, when both contend, &c.] We have precifely the fame image in K. Lear, exprefied with more brevity: he was met even now, "As mad as the VEX'D fea." MALONE. 8 out of haunt,] Out of baunt, means out of company. So, in Antony and Cleopatra: "Dido and her Sichæus fhall want troops, "And all the baunt be ours." This mad young man: but, fo much was our love, Shews itself pure; he weeps for what is done. The fun no fooner fhall the mountains touch, Enter ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN. [Exeunt Rof. and Guil, Come, Gertrude, we'll call up our wisest friends; Again, in Warner's Albion's England, 1602, book v. chap. 26: And from the fmith of heaven's wife allure the amorous baunt." The place where men affemble, is often poetically called the baunt of men. So, in Romeo and Juliet: "We talk here in the public baunt of men." STEEVENS. 9-like fome ore,] Shakspeare feems to think ore to be or, that is, gold. Bafe metals have ore no less than precious. JOHNSON. He has perhaps ufed ore in the fame fenfe in his Rape of Lucrece: "When beauty boafted blushes, in despite "Virtue would ftain that ore with filver white." See Vol. X. p. go, n. 6. A mineral Minĺheu defines in his Dictionary, 1617, “Any thing that grows in mines, and contains metals." Shakspeare feems to have ufed the word in this fenfe,-for a rude mass of metals. In Bullokar's English Expofitor, 8vo, 1616, Mineral is defined, “ mettall, or any thing digged out of the earth." MALONE. Minerals are mines. So, in The Golden Remains of Hales of Eton, 1693, p. 34. Controverfies of the times, " like spirits in the minerals, with all their labour, nothing is done." STEEVENS, And And let them know, both what we mean to do, As level as the cannon to his blank, Transports his poifon'd fhot,-may mifs our name, SCENE II. Another Room in the fame. Enter HAMLET. [Exeunta Ham.-Safely ftow'd,-[Rof. &c. within. Hamlet! lord Hamlet!] But foft 3,-what noife? who calls on Hamlet? O, here they come. Enter 1-fo viperous flander, &c.] Neither thefe words, nor the following three lines and an half, are in the folio. In the quarto, 1604, and all the fubfequent quartos, the paffage ftands thus: And what's untimely done. Whose whisper o'er the world's diameter, &c. the compofitor having omitted the latter part of the first line, as in a former fcene; (fee p. 310, n. 4.) a circumftance which gives additional ftrength to an obfervation made in Vol. VII. p. 575, n. 8. Mr. Theobald fupplied the lacuna by reading-For baply flander, &c. So appears to me to fuit the context better; for thefe lines are rather in appofition with thofe immediately preceding, than an illation from them. Mr. Mafon, I find, has made the fame obfervation. Shakspeare, as Theobald has obferved, again expatiates on the diffufive power of flander, in Cymbeline: 3 66 No, 'tis flander; "Whofe edge is sharper than the fword, whofe tongue "All corners of the world." MALONE. the woundlefs air.] So, in a former fcene: "It is as the air invulnerable." MALONE. But foft,] I have added these two words from the quartos. STEEVENS La Enter ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN. Rof. What have you done, my lord, with the dead body? Ham. Compounded it with duft4, whereto 'tis kin. Rof. Tell us where 'tis; that we may take it thence, And bear it to the chapel. Ham. Do not believe it. Rof. Believe what? Ham. That I can keep your counfel, and not mine own. Befides, to be demanded of a fpunge!-what replication fhould be made by the fon of a king? Rof. Take you me for a fpunge, my lord? Ham. Ay, fir; that foaks up the king's countenance, his rewards, his authorities. But fuch officers do the king beft fervice in the end: He keeps them, like an ape, in the corner of his jaw; first mouth'd, to be laft In the quarto, 1604, the speech ftands thus: Ham. Safely ftow'd; but foft, what noife? who calls on Hamlet? &c. I have therefore printed Hamlet's fpeech unbroken, and inferted that of Rofencrantz, &c. from the folio, before the words, but foft, &c. In the modern editions Hamlet is made to take notice of the noile made by the courtiers, before he has heard it. MALONE. 4 Compounded it with dufi,-] So in K. Henry IV. P. II. Only compound me with forgotten duft." Again, in our poet's 71ft Sonnet; "When I perhaps compounded am with clay." MALONE. 5-like an ape,] The quarto has apple, which is generally fol lowed. The folio has ape, which Hanmer has received, and illuf trated with the following note. "It is the way of monkeys in eating, to throw that part of their food, which they take up firft, into a pouch they are provided with "on the fide of their jaw, and there they keep it, till they have done "with the reft." JOHNSON. Surely this fhould be "like an ape an apple." FARMER. The reading of the folio, like an ape, I believe to be the true one, becaufe Shakspeare has the fame phrafeology in many other places, The word ape refers to the king, not to his courtiers. He keeps them, like an ape, in the corner of bis jaw, &c. means, he keeps them, as an ape keeps food, in the corner of his jaw, &c. So, in K. Henry IV. P. I. "your chamber-lie breeds fleas like a loach;" i. e. as fast as a Joach breeds, loaches. Again, in K. Lear: "They flatter'd me like a dog; i. e. as a dog fawns upon and flatters bis mafter. That the particular food in Shakspeare's contemplation was an apple, may be inferred from the following paffage in The Captain, by Beaumont and Fletcher: " And |