[Footnote 2: This may well seem prating inconsistency, but I suppose means that he must not be represented as without moderation in his wickedness.]
[Footnote 3: _Untamed_, as a hawk.]
[Footnote 4: The lines are properly arranged in _Q_.
A sauagenes in vnreclamed blood, Of generall a.s.sault.
--that is, "which a.s.sails all."]
[Footnote 5: Here a hesitating pause.]
[Footnote 6: --with the expression of, "Is that what you would say?"]
[Footnote 7: "a fetch with warrant for it"--a justifiable trick.]
[Footnote 8: Compare _sallied_, 25, both Quartos; _sallets_ 67, 103; and see _soil"d_, next line.]
[Footnote 9: "Addition," epithet of courtesy in address.]
[Footnote 10: _Q_. has not this line]
[Page 68]
_Polon._ At closes in the consequence, I marry, He closes with you thus. I know the Gentleman, [Sidenote: He closes thus,]
I saw him yesterday, or tother day; [Sidenote: th"other]
Or then or then, with such and such; and as you say, [Sidenote: or such,]
[Sidenote: 25] There was he gaming, there o"retooke in"s Rouse, [Sidenote: was a gaming there, or tooke]
There falling out at Tennis; or perchance, I saw him enter such a house of saile; [Sidenote: sale,]
_Videlicet_, a Broth.e.l.l, or so forth. See you now; Your bait of falshood, takes this Cape of truth; [Sidenote: take this carpe]
And thus doe we of wisedome and of reach[1]
With windlesses,[2] and with a.s.saies of Bias, By indirections finde directions out: So by my former Lecture and aduice Shall you my Sonne; you haue me, haue you not?
_Reynol._ My Lord I haue.
_Polon._ G.o.d buy you; fare you well, [Sidenote: yeye]
_Reynol._ Good my Lord.
_Polon._ Obserue his inclination in your selfe.[3]
_Reynol._ I shall my Lord.
_Polon._ And let him[4] plye his Musicke.
_Reynol._ Well, my Lord. _Exit_.
_Enter Ophelia_.
_Polon_. Farewell: How now _Ophelia_, what"s the matter?
_Ophe_. Alas my Lord, I haue beene so affrighted.
[Sidenote: O my Lord, my Lord,]
_Polon_. With what, in the name of Heauen?
[Sidenote: i"th name of G.o.d?]
_Ophe_. My Lord, as I was sowing in my Chamber, [Sidenote: closset,]
Lord _Hamlet_ with his doublet all vnbrac"d,[5]
No hat vpon his head, his stockings foul"d, Vngartred, and downe giued[6] to his Anckle, Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other, And with a looke so pitious in purport, As if he had been loosed out of h.e.l.l,
[Footnote 1: of far reaching mind.]
[Footnote 2: The word windlaces is explained in the dictionaries as _shifts, subtleties_--but apparently on the sole authority of this pa.s.sage. There must be a figure in _windlesses_, as well as in _a.s.saies of Bias_, which is a phrase plain enough to bowlers: the trying of other directions than that of the _jack_, in the endeavour to come at one with the law of the bowl"s bias. I find _wanla.s.s_ a term in hunting: it had to do with driving game to a given point--whether in part by getting to windward of it, I cannot tell. The word may come of the verb wind, from its meaning "_to manage by shifts or expedients_": _Barclay_. As he has spoken of fishing, could the _windlesses_ refer to any little instrument such as now used upon a fishing-rod? I do not think it. And how do the words _windlesses_ and _indirections_ come together? Was a windless some contrivance for determining how the wind blew? I bethink me that a thin withered straw is in Scotland called a _windlestrae_: perhaps such straws were thrown up to find out "by indirection" the direction of the wind.
The press-reader sends me two valuable quotations, through Latham"s edition of Johnson"s Dictionary, from Dr. H. Hammond (1605-1660), in which _windla.s.s_ is used as a verb:--
"A skilful woodsman, by windla.s.sing, presently gets a shoot, which, without taking a compa.s.s, and thereby a commodious stand, he could never have obtained."
"She is not so much at leasure as to windlace, or use craft, to satisfy them."
To _windlace_ seems then to mean "to steal along to leeward;" would it be absurd to suggest that, so-doing, the hunter _laces the wind_?
Shakspere, with many another, I fancy, speaks of _threading the night_ or _the darkness_.
Johnson explains the word in the text as "A handle by which anything is turned."]
[Footnote 3: "in your selfe." may mean either "through the insight afforded by your own feelings"; or "in respect of yourself," "toward yourself." I do not know which is intended.]
[Footnote 4: 1st Q. "And bid him".]
[Footnote 5: loose; _undone_.]
[Footnote 6: His stockings, slipped down in wrinkles round his ankles, suggested the rings of _gyves_ or fetters. The verb _gyve_, of which the pa.s.sive participle is here used, is rarer.]
[Page 70]
To speake of horrors: he comes before me.
_Polon._ Mad for thy Loue?
_Ophe._ My Lord, I doe not know: but truly I do feare it.[1]
_Polon._ What said he?
_Ophe._[2] He tooke me by the wrist, and held me hard; Then goes he to the length of all his arme; And with his other hand thus o"re his brow, He fals to such perusall of my face, As he would draw it. Long staid he so, [Sidenote: As a]
At last, a little shaking of mine Arme: And thrice his head thus wauing vp and downe; He rais"d a sigh, so pittious and profound, That it did seeme to shatter all his bulke, [Sidenote: As it]
And end his being. That done, he lets me goe, And with his head ouer his shoulders turn"d, [Sidenote: shoulder]
He seem"d to finde his way without his eyes, For out adores[3] he went without their helpe; [Sidenote: helps,]
And to the last, bended their light on me.