Laer. Say you fo? come on. Or. Nothing neither way. Laer. Have at you now. [They play. [Laertes wounds Hamlet; then, in fcuffling, they change rapiers, and Hamlet wounds Laertes. King. Part them, they are incens'd. Ham. Nay, come again. Ofr. Look to the queen there, ho! [The queen falls. Hor. They bleed on both fides:-How is it, my lord? Ofr. How is't, Laertes? Laer. Why, as a woodcock to my own fpringe, Ofrick; I am juftly kill'd with mine own treachery. Ham. How does the queen? King. She fwoons to fee them bleed. Queen. No, no, the drink, the drink,-O my dear Hamlet! The drink, the drink;-I am poifon'd! Ham. O villainy !-Ho! let the door be lock'd: Treachery! feek it out. [dies. [Laertes falls. Laer. It is here, Hamlet: Hamlet, thou art flain; No medicine in the world can do thee good, In thee there is not half an hour's life; The treacherous inftrument is in thy hand, Unbated, and envenom'd: the foul practice Hath turn'd itself on me; lo, here I lie, Never to rife again: Thy mother's poifon'd; I can no more;-the king, the king's to blame. Ham. The point envenom'd too! Then, venom, to thy work, Ofr. and Lords. Treafon! treafon! [ftabs the king. King. O, yet defend me, friends, I am but hurt. Ham. Here, thou inceftuous, murd'rous, damned Dane, Drink off this potion :-Is the union here? Follow my mother. [King dies. Laer. He is juftly serv'd; 8 Is the union bere?] Thus the folio. In a former paffage in the quarto, 1604, for union we had unice; here it has onyx. It fhould feem from this line, and Laertes's next fpeech, that Hamlet here forces the expiring king to drink fome of the poifoned cup, and that he dies while it is at his lips. MALONE. It is a poifon temper'd by himself. Exchange forgivenefs with me, noble Hamlet: Ham. Heaven make thee free of it! I follow thee. Hor. Never believe it; I am more an antique Roman than a Dane, Ham. As thou'rt a man, [dies. Give me the cup; let go; by heaven, I'll have it.— Things ftanding thus unknown, fhall live behind me 3? Abfent thee from felicity a while, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my ftory. [March afar off, and shot within. What warlike noife is this? Ofr. Young Fortinbras, with conqueft come from Poland, To the ambaffadors of England gives This warlike volley. Ham. O, I die, Horatio; 9 That are but mutes or audience to this act,] That are either mere auditors of this catastrophe, or at most only mute performers, that fill the stage without any part in the action. JOHNSON. -as this fell ferjeant, death, I ftrict in bis arreft,] So, in our poet's 74th Sonnet: when that fell arrest, "Without all bail, fhall carry me away,-." MALONE. 20 God!-Horatio, &c.] Thus the quarto, 1604. Folio: O good Horatio. MALONE. 3 -fball live bebind me?] Thus the folis. The quartos read-shall I leave behind me. STEEVENS. The potent poifon quite o'er-crows my spirit +; On Fortinbras; he has my dying voice; So tell him, with the occurrents 5, more and lefs, prince; And flights of angels fing thee to thy reft?!— [March within. Enter 4 The potent poifon quite o'er-crows my spirit ;] This word, for which Mr. Pope and the fucceeding editors have fubftituted over-grows, is ufed by Holinfhed in his Hiftory of Ireland: "Thefe noblemen laboured with tooth and nayle to over-crowe, and confequently to overthrow, one another." Again, in the epiftle prefixed to Nafhe's Apologie of Pierce Pennileffe, 1593: "About two yeeres fince a certayne demi-divine took upon him to let his foote to mine, and over-crowe mee with comparative terms." MALONE. 5 the occurrents,] i. e. incidents. The word is now disused. So, in The Hog bath loft bis Pearl, 1614: "Such ftrange occurrents of my fore-paft life." STEEVENS. 6 Which have folicited,-] What Hamlet would have faid, the poet has not given us any ground for conjecturing. By folicited, Dr. War. burton understands, brought on the event. The words feem to mean no more than-which bave incited me to. MALONE. 7 Now cracks a noble heart :-Good night, fweet prince; And fights of angels fing thee to thy reft!] So, in Pericles, Prince of Tyre, 1009: "If thou liv'ft, Pericles, thou haft a beart, "That even cracks for woe." The concluding words of the unfortunate Lord Effex's prayer on the fcaffold were thele: "-and when my life and body fhall part, fend thy bleffed angels, which may receive my foule, and convey it to the joys of heaven." "Hamlet had certainly been exhibited before the execution of that amiable nobleman; but the words here given to Horatio might have been one of the many additions made to this play. As no copy of an earlier date than 1604 has yet been discovered, whether Lord Effex's laft words were in our authour's thoughts, cannot now be afcertained. MALONE. Let us review for a moment the behaviour of Hamlet, on the strength of which Horatio founds this eulogy, and recommends him to the patronage of angels. Hamlet, at the command of his father's ghoft, undertakes with feeming alacrity to revenge the murder; and declares he will banish all other thoughts from his mind. He makes, however, but one ef fort 1 Enter FORTINBRAS, the English Ambaffadors, and Others. Fort. Where is this fight? Hor. fort to keep his word, and that is, when he mistakes Polonius for the king. On another occafion, he defers his purpofe till he can find an opportunity of taking his uncle when he is leaft prepared for death, that he may infure damnation to his foul. Though he allaflinated Polonius by accident, yet he deliberately procures the execution of his fchool-fellows, Rofencrantz and Guilderstern, who appear to have been unacquainted with the treacherous purposes of the mandate which they were employed to carry. Their death (as he declares in a fubfequent converfation with Horatio) gives him no concern, for they obtruded themselves into the service, and he thought he had a right to destroy them. He is not lefs accountable for the distraction and death of Ophelia. He comes to interrupt the funeral defigned in honour of this lady, at which both the king and queen were prefent; and, by fuch an outrage to decency, renders it ftill more neceflary for the ufurper to lay a fecond ftratagem for his life, though the first had proved abortive. He comes to infult the brother of the dead, and to boast of an affection for his fifter, which, before, he had denied to her face; and yet at this very time must be confidered as defirous of fupporting the character of a madman, fo that the openness of his confellion is not to be imputed to him as a virtue. He apologizes to Horatio afterwards for the abfurdity of this behaviour, to which, he fays, he was provoked by that nobleness of fraternal grief, which, indeed, he ought rather to have applauded than condemned. Dr. Johnfon has obferved, that to bring about a reconciliation with Laertes, he has availed himself of a difhoneft fallacy; and to conclude, it is obvious to the most careless fpectator or reader, that he kills the king at last to revenge himself, and not his father. Hamlet cannot be faid to have pursued his ends by very warrantable means; and if the poet, when he facrificed him at laft, meant to have enforced fuch a moral, it is not the worit that can be deduced from the play; for, as Maximus, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Valentinian, fays, Although his juftice were as white as truth, "His way was crooked to it; that condemns him." The late Dr. Akenfide once obferved to me, that the conduct of Hamlet was every way unnatural and indefenfible, unless he were to be regarded as a young man whofe intellects were in fome degree impaired by his own misfortunes; by the death of his father, the lofs of expected fovereignty, and a fenfe of fhame refulting from the haity and incestuous marriage of his mother. I have dwelt the longer on this fubject, because Hamlet feems to have been hitherto regarded as a hero not undeferving the pity of the audience; and becaufe no writer on Shakspeare has taken the pains to point out the immoral tendency of his character. STEEVENS. Hor. What is it, you would fee? If aught of woe, or wonder, ceafe your search. Fort. Some of the charges here brought againft Hamlet appear to me queftionable at leaft, if not unfounded. I have already obferved that in the novel on which this play is conftructed, the minifters who by the king's order accompanied the young prince to England, and carried with them a packet in which his death was concerted, were apprized of its contents; and therefore we may prefume that Shakspeare meant to defcribe their representatives, Rofencrantz and Guildenstern, as equally criminal; as combining with the king to deprive Hamlet of his life. His procuring their execution therefore does not with certainty appear to have been an unprovoked cruelty, and might have been confidered by him as neceffary to his future fafety; knowing, as he must have known, that they had devoted themselves to the fervice of the king in whatever he fhould command. The principle on which he acted, is afcertained by the following lines, from which also it may be inferred that the poet meant to reprefent Hamlet's fchool-fellows as privy to the plot against his life: "There's letters feal'd: and my two school-fellows- "They bear the mandate; they must fweep my way, "For 'tis the fport, to have the engineer "Hoift with his own petar; and it shall go hard, "And blow them to the moon." Another charge is, that "be comes to difturb the funeral of Ophelia :" but the fact is otherwife reprefented in the first scene of the fifth act: for when the funeral proceffion appears, (which he does not seek, but finds,) he exclaims, "The queen, the courtiers: who is this they follow, "And with fuch maimed rites ?" nor does he know it to be the funeral of Ophelia, till Laertes mentions that the dead body was that of his sister. I do not perceive that he is accountable for the madness of Ophelia. He did not mean to kill her father when concealed behind the arras, but the king; and ftill lefs did he intend to deprive her of her reafon and her life: her fubfequent diftraction therefore can no otherwise be laid to his charge, than as an unforeseen confequence from his too ardently pursuing the object recommended to him by his father. He appears to have been induced to leap into Ophelia's grave, not with a defign to infult Laertes, but from his love to her, (which then he had no reason to conceal,) and from the bravery of ber brother's grief, which excited him (not to condemn that brother, as has been ftated, but) to vie with him in the expreffion of affection and forrow: "Why, |