V.i.310 (323,6) When that her golden couplets] [W:  E’er that] Perhaps it should be,

  Ere yet—­

Yet and that are easily confounded.

V.ii.6 (324,7) mutinies in the bilboes] Mutinies, the French word for seditious or disobedient fellows in the army or fleet. Bilboes, the ship’s prison.

V.ii.6 (324,8) Rashly,/And prais’d be rashness for it—­Let us know] Both my copies read,

  —­Rashly,
  And prais’d be rashness for it, let us know.

Hamlet, delivering an account of his escape, begins with saying, that he rashly—­and then is carried into a reflection upon the weakness of human wisdom.  I rashly—­praised be rashness for it—­Let us not think these events casual, but let us know, that is, take notice and remember, that we sometimes succeed by indiscretion, when we fail by deep plots, and infer the perpetual superintendance and agency of the Divinity.  The observation is just, and will be allowed by every human being who shall reflect on the course of his own life.

V.ii.22 (325,9) With, ho! such bugs and goblins in my life] With such causes of terror, arising from my character and designs.

V.ii.29 (325,2) Being thus benetted round with villainies,/ Ere I could make a prologue to my brains] [W:  mark the prologue ... bane] In my opinion no alteration is necessary.  Hamlet is telling how luckily every thing fell out; he groped out their commission in the dark without waking them; he found himself doomed to immediate destruction.  Something was to be done for his preservation.  An expedient occurred, not produced by the comparison of one method with another, or by a regular deduction of consequences, but before he could make a prologue to his brains, they had begun the play.  Before he could summon his faculties, and propose to himself what should be done, a complete scheme of action presented itself to him.  His mind operated before he had excited it.  This appears to me to be the meaning.

V.ii.41 (326,5) As peace should still her wheaten garland wear,/ And stand a comma ’tween their amities] HANMER reads,

  And stand a cement—­

I am again inclined to vindicate the old reading.

The expression of our author is, like many of his phrases, sufficiently constrained and affected, but it is not incapable of explanation.  The comma is the note of connection and continuity of sentences; the period is the note of abruption and disjunction.  Shakespeare had it perhaps in his mind to write, That unless England complied with the mandate, war should put a period to their amity; he altered his mode of diction, and thought that, in an opposite sense, he might put, that Peace should stand a comma between their amities_.  This is not an easy stile; but is it not the stile of Shakespeare?