Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 303 pages of information about Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III.

Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 303 pages of information about Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III.

I.ii.204 (166,6) they, distill’d/Almost to jelly with the act of fear,/Stand dumb] [W:  th’ effect of] Here is an affectation of subtilty without accuracy. Fear is every day considered as an agent. Fear laid hold on him; fear drove him away.  If it were proper to be rigorous in examining trifles, it might be replied, that Shakespeare would write more erroneously, if he wrote by the direction of this critick; they were not distilled, whatever the word may mean, by the effect of fear; for that distillation was itself the effect; fear was the cause, the active cause, that distilled them by that force of operation which we strictly call act involuntary, and power in involuntary agents, but popularly call act in both.  But of this too much.

I.iii.15 (169,9) The virtue of his will] Virtue seems here to comprise both excellence and power, and may be explained the pure effect.

I.iii.21 (169,1) The sanity and health of the whole state] [W:  safety] HANMER reads very rightly, sanity. Sanctity is elsewhere printed for sanity, in the old edition of this play.

I.iii.32 (170,2) unmaster’d] i.e. licentious. (1773)

I.iii.34 (170,3) keep you in the rear of your affection] That is, do not advance so far as your affection would lead you.

I.iii.49 (170,4) Whilst, like a puft and reckless libertine] [W:  Whilest he] The emendation is not amiss, but the reason for it is very inconclusive; we use the same mode of speaking on many occasions.  When I say of one, he squanders like a spendthrift, of another, he robbed me like a thief, the phrase produces no ambiguity; it is understood that the one is a spendthrift, and the other a thief.

I.iii.64 (172,7) But do not dull thy palm with entertainment/Of each new-hatch’d, unfledg’d comrade] The literal sense is, Do not make thy palm callous by shaking every man by the hand.  The figurative meaning may be, Do not by promiscuous conversation make thy mind insensible to the difference of characters.

I.iii.81 (173,1) my blessing season this in thee!] [Season, for infuse.  WARBURTON.] It is more than to infuse, it is to infix it in such a manner as that it never may wear out.

I.iii.83 (173,3) your servants tend] i.e. your servants are waiting for you. (1773)

I.iii.86 (173,4) ’Tis in my memory lock’d,/And you yourself shall keep the key of it] That is, By thinking on you, I shall think on your lessons.

I.iii.107 (174,6)

  Tender yourself mere dearly;
  Or (not to crack the wind of the poor phrase)
  Wronging it thus, you’ll tender me a fool]

I believe the word wronging has reference, not to the phrase, but to Ophelia; if you go on wronging it thus, that is, if you continue to go on thus wrong.  This is a mode of speaking perhaps not very grammatical, but very common, nor have the best writers refused it.

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Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.