III.iii.66 (263,1) Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?] What can repentance do for a man that cannot be penitent, for a man who has only part of penitence, distress of conscience, without the other part, resolution of amendment.

III.iii.77 (264,1) I, his sole son, do this same villain send] The folio reads foule son, a reading apparently corrupted from the quarto.  The meaning is plain. I, his only son, who am bound to punish his murderer.

III.iii.88 (264,2) Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent] [T:  bent] This reading is followed by Sir T. HANMER and Dr. WARBURTON; but hent is probably the right vord.  To hent is used by Shakespeare for, to seize, to catch, to lay hold on. Hent is, therefore, hold, or seizure. Lay hold on him, sword, at a more horrid time.

III.iii.94 (265,3) his soul may be as damn’d and black/As hell, whereto it goes] This speech, in which Hamlet, represented as a virtuous character, is not content vith taking blood for blood, but contrives damnation for the man that he would punish, is too horrible to be read or to be uttered.

III.iv.4 (266,4) I’ll silence me e’en here:/Pray you, be round vith him] Sir T. HANMER, who is folloved by Dr. WARBURTON, reads,

  —­I’ll sconce me here.

Retire to a place of security.  They forget that the contrivance of Polonius to overhear the conference, was no more told to the queen than to Hamlet.—­I’ll silence me even here, is, I’ll use no more words.

III.iv.48 (268,8)

  Heaven’s face doth glow;
  Yea, this solidity and compound mass,
  With tristful visage, as against the doom,
  It thought-sick at the act]

[W:  O’er this ... visage, and, as ’gainst] The word heated [from the “old quarto"], though it agrees well enough with glow, is, I think, not so striking as tristful, which was, I suppose, chosen at the revisal.  I believe the whole passage now stands as the author gave it.  Dr. WARBURTON’s reading restores two improprieties, which Shakespeare, by his alteration, had removed.  In the first, and in the new reading:  Heaven’s face glows with tristful visage; and, Heaven’s face is thought-sick.  To the common reading there is no just objection.

III.iv.52 (268,9) what act,/That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?] The meaning is, What is this act, of which the discovery, or mention, cannot be made, but with this violence of clamour?

III.iv.82 (270,5) Rebellious hell,/If thou canst mutiny in a matron’s bones] I think the present reading right, but cannot admit that HANMER’s emendation ["Rebellious heat”] produces nonsense.  May not what is said of heat, be said of hell, that it will mutiny wherever it is quartered?  Though the emendation be elegant, it is not necessary. (1773)