III.i.52 (233,6) more ugly to the thing that helps it] That is, compared with the thing that helps it.

III.i.56-88 (233,7) To be, or not to be?] Of this celebrated soliloquy, which bursting from a man distracted with contrariety of desires, and overwhelmed with the magnitude of his own purposes, is connected rather in the speaker’s mind, than on his tongue, I shall endeavour to discover the train, and to shew how one sentiment produces another.  Hamlet, knowing himself injured in the most enormous and atrocious degree, and seeing no means of redress, but such as must expose him to the extremity of hazard, meditates on his situation in this manner:  Before I can form any rational scheme of action under this pressure of distress, it is necessary to decide, whether, after our present state, we are to be or not to be.  That is the question, which, as it shall be answered, will determine, whether ’tis nobler, and more suitable to the dignity of reason, to suffer the outrages of fortune patiently, or to take arms against them, and by opposing end them, though perhaps with the loss of life.  If to die, were to sleep, no more, and by a sleep to end the miseries of our nature, such a sleep were devoutly to be wished; but if to sleep in death, be to dream, to retain our powers of sensibility, we must pause to consider, in that sleep of death what dreams may come.  This consideration makes calamity so long endured; for who would bear the vexations of life, which might be ended by a bare bodkin, but that he is afraid of something in unknown futurity?  This fear it is that gives efficacy to conscience, which, by turning the mind upon this regard, chills the ardour of resolution, checks the vigour of enterprize, and makes the current of desire stagnate in inactivity.  We may suppose that he would have applied these general observations to his own case, but that he discovered Ophelia.

III.i.59 (234,8) Or to take arms against a sea of troubles] [W:  against assail] Mr. Pope proposed siege.  I know not why there should be so much solicitude about this metaphor.  Shakespeare breaks his metaphors often, and in this desultory speech there was less need of preserving them.

III.i.70 (235,2) the whips and scorns of time] [W:  of th’ time] I doubt whether the corruption of this passage is not more than the editor has suspected. Whips and scorns have no great connexion with one another, or with time:  whips and scorns are evils of very different magnitude, and though at all times scorn may be endured, yet the times that put men ordinarily in danger of whips, are rery rare.  Falstaff has said, that the courtiers would whip him with their quick wits; but I know not that whip can be used for a scoff or insult, unless its meaning be fixed by the whole expression.