II.ii.24 (202,2)

  For the supply and profit of our hope,
  Your visitation shall receive such thanks]

That the hope which your arrival has raised may be completed by the desired effect.

II.ii.47 (203,4) the trail of policy] The trail is the course of an animal pursued by the scent.

Il.ii.52 (203,5) My news shall be the fruit of that great feast] The desert after the meat.

II.ii.84 (204,7) at night we’ll feast] The king’s intemperance is never suffered to be forgotten.

II.ii.86-167 (205,8) My liege, and Madam, to expostulate] This account of the character of Polonius, though it sufficiently reconciles the seeming inconsistency of so much wisdom with so much folly, does not perhaps correspond exactly to the ideas of our author.  The commentator Warburton makes the character of Polonius, a character only of manners, discriminated by properties superficial, accidental, and acquired.  The poet intended a nobler delineation of a mixed character of manners and of nature.  Polonius is a man bred in courts, exercised in business, stored with observations, confident of his knowledge, proud of his eloquence, and declining into dotage.  His mode of oratory is truly represented as designed to ridicule the practice of those times, of prefaces that made no introduction, and of method that embarrassed rather than explained.  This part of his character is accidental, the rest is natural.  Such a man is positive and confident, because he knows that his mind was once strong, and knows not that it is become weak.  Such a man excels in general principles, but fails in the particular application.  He is knowing in retrospect, and ignorant in foresight.  While he depends upon his memory, and can draw from his repositories of knowledge, he utters weighty sentences, and gives useful counsel; but as the mind in its enfeebled state cannot be kept long busy and intent, the old man is subject to sudden dereliction of his faculties, he loses the order of his ideas, and entangles himself in his own thoughts, till he recovers the leading principle, and falls again into his former train.  This idea of dotage encroaching upon wisdom, will solve all the phaenomena of the character of Polonius.

II.ii.109 (207,1) To the celestial, and my soul’s idol, the most beautified Ophelia] [T:  beatified] Both Sir Thomas Hanmer and Dr. Warburton have followed Theobald, but I am in doubt whether beautified, though, as Polonius calls it, a vile phrase, be not the proper word. Beautified seems to be a vile phrase, for the ambiguity of its meaning, (rev. 1778, X, 241, 3)

II.ii.126 (208,2) more above] is, moreover, besides.

II.ii.145 (209,6) she took the fruits of my advice] She took the fruits of advice when she obeyed advice, the advice was then made fruitful.

II.ii.181 (211,9) For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog,/Being a god, kissing carrion] [This is Warburton’s emendation for “a good kissing”] This is a noble emendation, which almost sets the critic on a level with the author.