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THE ARDEN SHAKESPEARE

Alls Well That Ends Well edited by G K Hunter Antony and C leopatra edited by John vVilders

As You Like It edited by Agnes Latham The Comedy of Errors edited by R A Foakes

Coriolanus edited by Philip Brockbank Cymbeline edited by J M Nosworthy

Hamlet edited by Harold Jenkins Julius Caesar edited by T S Dorsch

King Henry IV Parts I amp 2 edited by A R Humphreys King Henry V edited by T W Craik

King Henry VI Parts 1) 2 amp 3 edited by Andrew S Cairncross King Henry VIII edited by R A Foakes King John edited by E A J Honigmann

King Lear edited by R A Foakes King Richard II edi ted by Peter Cre

King Richard III edited by Anthony Hammond Loves Labours Lost edited by Richard Dmid

Macbeth edited by Kenneth ~luir Measure for Measure edited by J W Lenr

The Merchant of Venice edited byJohn Russell Brown The Merry Wives of Windsor edited by HJ Oliver

A Midsummer Nights Dream edited by Harold F Brooks Much Ado About Nothing edited by A R Humphreys

Othello edited by E A J Honigmann Pericles edited by F D Hoeniger The Poems edited by F T Prince

Romeo and Juliet edited by Brian Gibbons Shakespeares Sonnets edited by Katherine Duncan-Joncs

The Taming of the Shrew edited by Brian Morris The Tempest edited by Frank Kermode Timon of Athens edited by H J Oliver

Titus Andronicus edited by Jonathan Bate Troilus and Crcssida edited by KJ Palmer

Twelfth Night edited byJ M Lothian and T W Craik The Two Gentlemen of Verona edited by Clifford Leech

The Two Noble Kinsmen edited by Lois Potter The Winters Tale edited by J H P Pafford

Third Sni(s

THE ARDEN EDITION OF THE

WORKS OF tVILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

HAMLET

Edited by HAROLD JENKINS

~

424 HAMLET

HAMLET PRINCE OF DENMARK

I i 1-25] These first 25 lines are an excellent example ofShakeshyspeares technique in incorporating short colloquial exchanges in what is essentially a blank-verse scene (Cf 1 ii 224-43 and n) While speeches of as much as five feet scan easily as blank verse (II 2 6-8 etc) shorter speeches often do not and cannot be expected to add up to regular metrical units See McKerrow Prolegomena pp 45-6 I have not here followed the usual editorial practice of wrenching into a typographical simulation of the blank-verse pattern what is clearly not meant to conform to it Coleridge (i 18 38-9) notes in this opening the familiar language of common life which leads gradually and naturally to that state in which the highest poetry will appear

I i 26 fantasy] This reflects a contemporary opinion concerning the nature of ghosts While most authorities affirmed them to exist it was generally acknowledged even by those who believed in them most firmly that they could in some cases be the product of the subjective mind See eg Taillepied chs 3-5 Cf Caes IV iii 274-5 Mac III iv 6 Iff Le Loyer (Des Spectres 1586) with a terminological nicety not usual distinguishes between a phanshytom and a spectre Hence Horatios scepticism need not imply that he denies ghosts altogether Yet that many good and godly men held all apparitions to be hallucinations was conceded by Lavater (1 ii) Cf Burton on spirits (Anat of Melancholy 1 ii I (2)) Many will not believe they can be seen This view called damnable by James I had been maintained in Reginald Scots Discovery of Witchcrcift (with appendix on Devils and Spirits) 1584 On the dramatic use Shakespeare makes of conflicting conshytemporary attitudes to ghosts see Dover Wilson WHH pp 59ff

I i 32 speak to it] They assume that the Ghost wishes to comshymunicate but is unable to For in popular belief A ghost has not the power to speak till it has been first spoken to so that notshywithstanding the urgency of the business on which it may come everything must stand still till the person visited can find suffishycient courage to speak to it (Grose A Provincial Glossary Brand Popular Antiquities ed Hazlitt) Cf Tom Jones XI ch 2 The other who like a ghost only wanted to be spoke to readily answered Boswells Johnson Tom Tyers said You are like a ghost you never speak till you are spoken to Nor does

LONGER NOTES 425

the Hamlet ghost either in 1 iv-v or in III iv Yet for all the imshyportance of addressing it (see below 1 48 1ii 21 4 245) to do so in other than due form would be to risk offence and consequent danger to oneself Hence the necessity for having present a man of superior learning (cf I 45)

Iimiddot42SD Enter Ghost] Possibly via a trap-door (cf I 33 )n

like the spirits in Greenes Alphonsus Chapmans Bussy dAmbois Jonsons Catiline and other plays as is held by Lawrence (PreshyRestoration Stage Studies pp I04ff) and Sprague (Shakespeare and the Actors p 128) This though not perhaps in conflict with is not supported by the dialogue which suggests movement across the stage (II 43 129-30) On departing the first time the Ghost stalks away (1 53)middot The second time it faded (I 162) but this word like appears and vanishd (Iii20I 220) is used not during but after the event But cf I v 91 SD n What the Ghost looks like is described at II 50 63 65 and I ii 200-2 226-33 Its being in armour is repeatedly stressed (cf IiV5 2)

I i 66 sledded Polacks] This much-disputed phrase is usually taken and I think rightly to refer to inhabitants of Poland riding in sleds I t is true that the spelling sleaded pollax deriving from QI suggests that the early actors and printers did not so understand it They must have thought the second word was pole-axe or as F4 prints it poleaxe of which pollax was a regular 16th- turycenspelling But this spelling may have arisen in QI through an actors misunderstanding of what he heard and said (Cf)ntro p 23middot) Polack speJt in Q2 Pollacke QI Polacke F Poleak is -normal Elizabethan for Pole as in IIii63 75 and (in Q2) Iviv23 Despi te some assertions to the con trary the plural Polacks (or Polakes) also Occurs as in R Johnson Kingdoms and CommonshyWeals (The World 1601) pp 127 128 Moryson Itinerary 19

0 7-8

edn iii 380 Scholars who accept pole-axe (for a recent defence of which see D Haley SQ XXIX 407-13) either assume a battle-axe with a sled or sledge ie hammer to it (so Schmidt) despite the lack of authority for sled in this sense or take sleaded as a corrupshytion of leaded or (by analogy with FQ v xii 14) of studded (NampQ CC1 509) In any event they see King Hamlet striking a weapon on the ice This interpretation since it a voids actual fighting may be thought to be supported by parle (but see below) he objection to it apart altogether from the difficulty of sleaded 18 the poin tlessness of the inciden tit leaves us wi th if no Polanders and no sledges why ice A pole-axe connects with nothing else in

THE ARDEN SHAKESPEARE

Alls Well That Ends Well edited by G K Hunter Antony and C leopatra edited by John vVilders

As You Like It edited by Agnes Latham The Comedy of Errors edited by R A Foakes

Coriolanus edited by Philip Brockbank Cymbeline edited by J M Nosworthy

Hamlet edited by Harold Jenkins Julius Caesar edited by T S Dorsch

King Henry IV Parts I amp 2 edited by A R Humphreys King Henry V edited by T W Craik

King Henry VI Parts 1) 2 amp 3 edited by Andrew S Cairncross King Henry VIII edited by R A Foakes King John edited by E A J Honigmann

King Lear edited by R A Foakes King Richard II edi ted by Peter Cre

King Richard III edited by Anthony Hammond Loves Labours Lost edited by Richard Dmid

Macbeth edited by Kenneth ~luir Measure for Measure edited by J W Lenr

The Merchant of Venice edited byJohn Russell Brown The Merry Wives of Windsor edited by HJ Oliver

A Midsummer Nights Dream edited by Harold F Brooks Much Ado About Nothing edited by A R Humphreys

Othello edited by E A J Honigmann Pericles edited by F D Hoeniger The Poems edited by F T Prince

Romeo and Juliet edited by Brian Gibbons Shakespeares Sonnets edited by Katherine Duncan-Joncs

The Taming of the Shrew edited by Brian Morris The Tempest edited by Frank Kermode Timon of Athens edited by H J Oliver

Titus Andronicus edited by Jonathan Bate Troilus and Crcssida edited by KJ Palmer

Twelfth Night edited byJ M Lothian and T W Craik The Two Gentlemen of Verona edited by Clifford Leech

The Two Noble Kinsmen edited by Lois Potter The Winters Tale edited by J H P Pafford

Third Sni(s

THE ARDEN EDITION OF THE

WORKS OF tVILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

HAMLET

Edited by HAROLD JENKINS

~

424 HAMLET

HAMLET PRINCE OF DENMARK

I i 1-25] These first 25 lines are an excellent example ofShakeshyspeares technique in incorporating short colloquial exchanges in what is essentially a blank-verse scene (Cf 1 ii 224-43 and n) While speeches of as much as five feet scan easily as blank verse (II 2 6-8 etc) shorter speeches often do not and cannot be expected to add up to regular metrical units See McKerrow Prolegomena pp 45-6 I have not here followed the usual editorial practice of wrenching into a typographical simulation of the blank-verse pattern what is clearly not meant to conform to it Coleridge (i 18 38-9) notes in this opening the familiar language of common life which leads gradually and naturally to that state in which the highest poetry will appear

I i 26 fantasy] This reflects a contemporary opinion concerning the nature of ghosts While most authorities affirmed them to exist it was generally acknowledged even by those who believed in them most firmly that they could in some cases be the product of the subjective mind See eg Taillepied chs 3-5 Cf Caes IV iii 274-5 Mac III iv 6 Iff Le Loyer (Des Spectres 1586) with a terminological nicety not usual distinguishes between a phanshytom and a spectre Hence Horatios scepticism need not imply that he denies ghosts altogether Yet that many good and godly men held all apparitions to be hallucinations was conceded by Lavater (1 ii) Cf Burton on spirits (Anat of Melancholy 1 ii I (2)) Many will not believe they can be seen This view called damnable by James I had been maintained in Reginald Scots Discovery of Witchcrcift (with appendix on Devils and Spirits) 1584 On the dramatic use Shakespeare makes of conflicting conshytemporary attitudes to ghosts see Dover Wilson WHH pp 59ff

I i 32 speak to it] They assume that the Ghost wishes to comshymunicate but is unable to For in popular belief A ghost has not the power to speak till it has been first spoken to so that notshywithstanding the urgency of the business on which it may come everything must stand still till the person visited can find suffishycient courage to speak to it (Grose A Provincial Glossary Brand Popular Antiquities ed Hazlitt) Cf Tom Jones XI ch 2 The other who like a ghost only wanted to be spoke to readily answered Boswells Johnson Tom Tyers said You are like a ghost you never speak till you are spoken to Nor does

LONGER NOTES 425

the Hamlet ghost either in 1 iv-v or in III iv Yet for all the imshyportance of addressing it (see below 1 48 1ii 21 4 245) to do so in other than due form would be to risk offence and consequent danger to oneself Hence the necessity for having present a man of superior learning (cf I 45)

Iimiddot42SD Enter Ghost] Possibly via a trap-door (cf I 33 )n

like the spirits in Greenes Alphonsus Chapmans Bussy dAmbois Jonsons Catiline and other plays as is held by Lawrence (PreshyRestoration Stage Studies pp I04ff) and Sprague (Shakespeare and the Actors p 128) This though not perhaps in conflict with is not supported by the dialogue which suggests movement across the stage (II 43 129-30) On departing the first time the Ghost stalks away (1 53)middot The second time it faded (I 162) but this word like appears and vanishd (Iii20I 220) is used not during but after the event But cf I v 91 SD n What the Ghost looks like is described at II 50 63 65 and I ii 200-2 226-33 Its being in armour is repeatedly stressed (cf IiV5 2)

I i 66 sledded Polacks] This much-disputed phrase is usually taken and I think rightly to refer to inhabitants of Poland riding in sleds I t is true that the spelling sleaded pollax deriving from QI suggests that the early actors and printers did not so understand it They must have thought the second word was pole-axe or as F4 prints it poleaxe of which pollax was a regular 16th- turycenspelling But this spelling may have arisen in QI through an actors misunderstanding of what he heard and said (Cf)ntro p 23middot) Polack speJt in Q2 Pollacke QI Polacke F Poleak is -normal Elizabethan for Pole as in IIii63 75 and (in Q2) Iviv23 Despi te some assertions to the con trary the plural Polacks (or Polakes) also Occurs as in R Johnson Kingdoms and CommonshyWeals (The World 1601) pp 127 128 Moryson Itinerary 19

0 7-8

edn iii 380 Scholars who accept pole-axe (for a recent defence of which see D Haley SQ XXIX 407-13) either assume a battle-axe with a sled or sledge ie hammer to it (so Schmidt) despite the lack of authority for sled in this sense or take sleaded as a corrupshytion of leaded or (by analogy with FQ v xii 14) of studded (NampQ CC1 509) In any event they see King Hamlet striking a weapon on the ice This interpretation since it a voids actual fighting may be thought to be supported by parle (but see below) he objection to it apart altogether from the difficulty of sleaded 18 the poin tlessness of the inciden tit leaves us wi th if no Polanders and no sledges why ice A pole-axe connects with nothing else in

424 HAMLET

HAMLET PRINCE OF DENMARK

I i 1-25] These first 25 lines are an excellent example ofShakeshyspeares technique in incorporating short colloquial exchanges in what is essentially a blank-verse scene (Cf 1 ii 224-43 and n) While speeches of as much as five feet scan easily as blank verse (II 2 6-8 etc) shorter speeches often do not and cannot be expected to add up to regular metrical units See McKerrow Prolegomena pp 45-6 I have not here followed the usual editorial practice of wrenching into a typographical simulation of the blank-verse pattern what is clearly not meant to conform to it Coleridge (i 18 38-9) notes in this opening the familiar language of common life which leads gradually and naturally to that state in which the highest poetry will appear

I i 26 fantasy] This reflects a contemporary opinion concerning the nature of ghosts While most authorities affirmed them to exist it was generally acknowledged even by those who believed in them most firmly that they could in some cases be the product of the subjective mind See eg Taillepied chs 3-5 Cf Caes IV iii 274-5 Mac III iv 6 Iff Le Loyer (Des Spectres 1586) with a terminological nicety not usual distinguishes between a phanshytom and a spectre Hence Horatios scepticism need not imply that he denies ghosts altogether Yet that many good and godly men held all apparitions to be hallucinations was conceded by Lavater (1 ii) Cf Burton on spirits (Anat of Melancholy 1 ii I (2)) Many will not believe they can be seen This view called damnable by James I had been maintained in Reginald Scots Discovery of Witchcrcift (with appendix on Devils and Spirits) 1584 On the dramatic use Shakespeare makes of conflicting conshytemporary attitudes to ghosts see Dover Wilson WHH pp 59ff

I i 32 speak to it] They assume that the Ghost wishes to comshymunicate but is unable to For in popular belief A ghost has not the power to speak till it has been first spoken to so that notshywithstanding the urgency of the business on which it may come everything must stand still till the person visited can find suffishycient courage to speak to it (Grose A Provincial Glossary Brand Popular Antiquities ed Hazlitt) Cf Tom Jones XI ch 2 The other who like a ghost only wanted to be spoke to readily answered Boswells Johnson Tom Tyers said You are like a ghost you never speak till you are spoken to Nor does

LONGER NOTES 425

the Hamlet ghost either in 1 iv-v or in III iv Yet for all the imshyportance of addressing it (see below 1 48 1ii 21 4 245) to do so in other than due form would be to risk offence and consequent danger to oneself Hence the necessity for having present a man of superior learning (cf I 45)

Iimiddot42SD Enter Ghost] Possibly via a trap-door (cf I 33 )n

like the spirits in Greenes Alphonsus Chapmans Bussy dAmbois Jonsons Catiline and other plays as is held by Lawrence (PreshyRestoration Stage Studies pp I04ff) and Sprague (Shakespeare and the Actors p 128) This though not perhaps in conflict with is not supported by the dialogue which suggests movement across the stage (II 43 129-30) On departing the first time the Ghost stalks away (1 53)middot The second time it faded (I 162) but this word like appears and vanishd (Iii20I 220) is used not during but after the event But cf I v 91 SD n What the Ghost looks like is described at II 50 63 65 and I ii 200-2 226-33 Its being in armour is repeatedly stressed (cf IiV5 2)

I i 66 sledded Polacks] This much-disputed phrase is usually taken and I think rightly to refer to inhabitants of Poland riding in sleds I t is true that the spelling sleaded pollax deriving from QI suggests that the early actors and printers did not so understand it They must have thought the second word was pole-axe or as F4 prints it poleaxe of which pollax was a regular 16th- turycenspelling But this spelling may have arisen in QI through an actors misunderstanding of what he heard and said (Cf)ntro p 23middot) Polack speJt in Q2 Pollacke QI Polacke F Poleak is -normal Elizabethan for Pole as in IIii63 75 and (in Q2) Iviv23 Despi te some assertions to the con trary the plural Polacks (or Polakes) also Occurs as in R Johnson Kingdoms and CommonshyWeals (The World 1601) pp 127 128 Moryson Itinerary 19

0 7-8

edn iii 380 Scholars who accept pole-axe (for a recent defence of which see D Haley SQ XXIX 407-13) either assume a battle-axe with a sled or sledge ie hammer to it (so Schmidt) despite the lack of authority for sled in this sense or take sleaded as a corrupshytion of leaded or (by analogy with FQ v xii 14) of studded (NampQ CC1 509) In any event they see King Hamlet striking a weapon on the ice This interpretation since it a voids actual fighting may be thought to be supported by parle (but see below) he objection to it apart altogether from the difficulty of sleaded 18 the poin tlessness of the inciden tit leaves us wi th if no Polanders and no sledges why ice A pole-axe connects with nothing else in

426 HAMLET

the play as is still true if you take it to refer to the man who bear the weapon (and have to invent a soldier on a sledge or hurdle of disgrace NampQ CCXIX 128-30) An attempt to attach an incident with a pole-axe to the combat against Fortinbras seems refuted by the adverb once which implies a separate occasion Clearly allusion is being made to a second exploit which will parallel the combat against Fortinbras as an illustration of King Hamlets martial prowess And what along with the natural sense of sledded gives the preference overwhelmingly to Poles in sleds as the object of his smiting is their power to stir the imagination which a pole-axe so signally lacks It is true that the Polish exploit is not subsequently elaborated as the combat against Norway is and that no source for one has been found but we cannot doubt its potentiality for elaboration and it may well have been in the dramatists mind at this stage to make more of the Polish matter than he subsequently did Was it this that led him to call the minister Hamlet kills by the remarkable name of Polonius (Was there an idea for an avenging Polack son alongside the son of Norway See Rice UStuds LX 104-5) But the Poles are not deshypendent on such speculation for their relevance They belong to the plays background wars in which Norway is balanced by Poland and which are already being prepared for with the sleds giving a northern local colour Shakespeare seems to have thought of these two countries as both bordering Denmark (see II ii 74-8 IV iv 3-4 and LN also Keith Brown Hamlets Place on the Map ShStuds IV 160-82) For Poles in sleds he would hardly need particular authority Orteliuss Epitome of the Theatre of the World tells how in the frozen fens of Lithuania then under the crown of Polonia men pass over the ice with sleds drawn by horses (Eng trans 1603 f 94v) and Samuel Lewkenors Discourse of Foreign Cities (1600) similarly describes how the Tartars around Vilna travel in sleds over snow not unlike the ocean Cf Cawley The Voyagers and Elizn Drama p 247 n on the regular association of sleds with the people of this region Still more to the present purshypose the pictorial Carta Marina of the Swede Olaus Magnus (1539) shows armed men riding on the Baltic which others cross in horse-drawn sledges Even if he had no particular incident to draw on Shakespeare would not be offending plausibility in imagining an encounter with sledded opponents on a frozen lake

or sea The reading Polack (sing ) meaning the King of Poland would

~orrespond with II ii63 75 and Iviv 23 and provide an attractshyIve parallel with Norway (1 64) but it fails to explain pollax (ie

LONGER NOTES 42 7 the hypothesis that pollax is an actor-reporters homonym deshymands the plural Pollacks ) There is obviously no substance in the argument that only the Polack himself would be sledded and to object that one man could not smite the Polish army shows a neglect of common idiom (cf Judges iii 13 he went and smote Israel)

The difficulty of reconciling the parle of 1 65 with smiting foes has I think been much exaggerated Adams improbably suggests that King Hamlet may have struck the Polish king with his glove or hand Others remark that frownd implying the vizor up is more compatible with parley than with fighting but the reverse is surely true of on the ice And the frown itself traditional of Mars (cf Iii23on ) is as much emblematic as realistic It not merely describes the warlike mien but suggests the warlike action as tle armour when he combated (II 63-4) so the frown when he smote Kittredge explains The parley broke up in a battle in which the King smote (routed ) the Polanders But I suspect that parle itself may imply a more than verbal encounter For although I can cite no parallel for such a use of parle Shakespeare more than once uses the verb speak in similar understatement to mean engage in combat In Coriolanus the reply to Has our general met the enemy is They lie in view but have not spoke as yet (I iv 4) and Antony in defiance of Pompeys navy says We ll speak with thee at sea (Ant II vi 25) Was it not this kind of speaking tha t took place in the parle on the ice

I i 91 Didforfeit all] All those his lands if strictly interpreted should include Fortinbrass Norwegian dominions but it is not likely to trouble us that by one of Shakespeares little inconsisshytencies Norway continues as an apparently independent kingdom (I ii II ii) All may derive from Belleforest who however applies it to the treasure (toutes les richesses ) in the defeated warriors ships (See Intro p 93 ) The difficulty if it is one arises from transshyferring the forfeit to lands it can hardly be resolved by supposing (with Honigmann Straiford-upon-Avon Studies 5 p 134) that lands which he stood seizd of could mean merely lands seized in war nor (with M Coyle NampQ CCXXIV 118-19) that all may refer only to lands against the which Hamlet gaged an equivalent portion of his The text conveniently or not is specific all the lands he possessed

I i 96 the same covnant] Some editors adopt the Q2 comart which Malone explained as a joint bargain Though it is hard to

HAMLET5deg0 attempts have been made to adjust the text or its interpretation to what is thus presupposed But we must remember the characshyteristic of Hamlet in his idle moods to bewilder by defeating expectation Preferring the expected Keightley supplied a negative (Ill not have ) for a reversal of the sense which Warburshyton had achieved more neatly by rendering for as fore (before) Others have sought to distinguish the suit of sables from the devils black and have decided that it signalizes the end of mourning by its richness and display Yet if Shakespeare had meant that he could have thought of something gayer and it is rather absurd for critics from Johnson to Dover Wilson to have insisted that sables are not black but brown - a view which has the concurrence of OED (sable sb 2 and a) but which Hotson with abundance of citation contradicts It is clear that whatever the scientific fact sables were always thought of as black literature betrays no inshycongruity in the use of the same word for the fur the heraldic colour and the poetic epithet for night No one has explained why being conventionally black and a badge of mourning sables should here denote the end of it In fact Hamlets suit of sables does not contrast with the devils black but outdoes it Speedy forgetting makes a man merry (II 123-5) and sables importing graveness (IV vii 79-80) must presuppose the opposite So as the text stands it is not that a father so long dead had now better be forgotten but that since he is remarkably not forshygotten he shall be remarkably and splendidly mourned And since one has to be old to wear sables they give a mocking emshyphasis to the long time his memory lasts

III ii 132 -3 the hobby-horse is forgot] The hobby-horse is well described by Nares as consisting of the figure of a horse fastened round the waist of a man his own legs going through the body of the horse and enabling him to walk but concealed by a long foot-cloth while false legs appeared where those of the man should be at the sides of the horse The Puritan disapproval of his lewd antics sometimes led the hobby-horse to be omitted from the Games (see for amusing illustration Fletcher Women Pleased IV i) but neither such disappearance of the hobby-horse nor the enactment by the hobby-horse of a ritual death and resurrection (as described in RES ns xxx 6- g) seems sufficient to account for the catch-phrase Hamlet quotes For 0 for 0 the hobbyshyhorse is forgot was the refrain of a popular song as is evident from Old Meg qf Herefordshire 160g D4 John Hunt the hobbyshyhorse wanting but three of an hundred twere time for him to

LONGER NOTES 5deg1 forget himself and sing but 0 nothing but 0 the hobby-horse is forgotten Cf LLL III i 25- 6 where Armados stammered But deg -but deg- is completed by Moth with The hobby-horse is forgot From its frequent use we seem to have an instance of a catch-phrase continuing in popularity after the original point of it had been lost What is certain is that the hobby-horse while very much remembered became a byword for being forgotten and as such the occasion for numerous jokes in Elizabethan plays

III ii 133 SD A dumb-show] Dumb-shows gratifying the popushylar taste for spectacle (c( 11 11-12) were common enough but commentary regularly stresses that this one is unique The usual dumb-show either presented things that could not be convenishyently given in dialogue or alternatively if it foreshadowed things which would be given in dialogue later it did so emblematically (See Creizenach The English Drama in the Age of Shakespeare pp 388-go WHH pp 146-7 B R Pearn Dumb-Show in Elizashybethan Drama RES XI 385-405 D Mehl The Elizabethan Dumb Show Ig65 ) What is peculiar in Hamlet is that the dumb-show exactly rehearses without dialogue what is then repeated with it It is easy however to exaggerate the singularity of this it could not have seemed strange to an Elizabethan audience already accustomed by the emblematic shows to see a theme given preshyliminary treatment in a different mode It had been to some extent anticipated in MND where the show which precedes the Pyramus play introduces actors who presumably mime the action while the Prologue is describing it (v i 126-50) The dumb-show in Hamlet likewise introduces an inset play and what is excepshytional in its character is evidently related to this exceptional use its first function is to reveal th(t plot of the inset play in advance so that the audience freed from having to concentrate on what this play is about may attend to the reactions of the stageshyaudience to it Only a modern spectator for whom Hamlet has been staled by familiarity is likely to find the dumb-show otiose and it becomes the more necessary in that the inset play itself is of course never completed (c( WHH pp 145-9) But the dumbshyshow has also a second function which extends beyond the present scene to the whole artistic design While illuminating Hamlets stratagem against the King it also holds aloof from this sequential action to bring into focus at the centre of the drama a perfect image of the crime which is the foundation of its plot

Yet the dumb-show has not fulfilled these functions without giving rise to a famous critical problem how is it that the King

502 HAMLET [Ill ii

whose conscience is so well caught when he sees his crime reshyenacted in the play remains unmoved by the dumb-show One answer has perhaps just been suggested A few scholars have supposed a textual anomaly whereby alternative versions are conflated (eg W J Lawrence in Life and Letters v 333-40 M H Dodds NampQ CLXIX 334-5) but most attempt a rational account of the Kings conduct which will square with the double representation Their explanations belong to three kinds (I) Since Claudius showed no reaction to the first representation of the murder it follows that he could not have seen the dumb-show (2) Since he was present he must be supposed to have seen it and it follows that he did not recognize what he saw (3) Since he must have both seen and recognized it it follows that he was strong enough to stand the sight of his crime once but not twice This last (3) the psychological explanation often called the second tooth theory is both the simplest and the one traditionshyally most favoured (Good exponents of it include W W Lawshyrence The Play-Scene in Hamlet]EGP XVIII 1-22 and Hamlet and the Mousetrap PMLA L1V 709-35 A Hart Once More the Mouse-trap RES XVII 11-20 Granville-Barker Prefaces III

89-93) In a court of law compelled to make deductions about fact from circumstantial evidence it is difficult to see what other conclusion could be reached Yet if this had been what the dramatist meant us to understand he could easily have given the King an aside (like that at lII i50 for instance) to show the first tooth hurting and he did not The trouble with all these theories is that they make additions to the text or at least assumptions for which the text gives no warrant They all apply to imaginary events the kind of rational inference appropriate only in the real world In a work of fiction what we do not know because the fiction does not tell us cannot be presumed to exist This is the basic objection to the suggestion that the King did not observe the dumb-show (I ) Tiecks idea that he was too absorbed in talk was revived by Halliwell-Phillipps who asked Is it allowshyable to direct that the King and Queen are whispering confishydentially to each other during the dumb-show and so escape a sight of it And this suggestion was taken up and insisted on by Dover Wilson (WHH pp 49-53 158-60 183-4) who wrote it into the stage-directions of his edition (pp 68-9 200-1) which has since been often followed on the stage and with unfortunate results for a King who whispers instead of watching can only divert the attention of the audience from the dumb-show which was put in for their benefit It is true that the sophisticated

133 SD] LONGER NOTES 50 3 modern theatre-goer not needing the dumb-show to inform him is likely in any case to watch the King not merely in order to note how he is taking it but to see which critical theory the proshyduction has elected for Yet this unholy legacy of criticism one would if such a thing were possible do better to renounce

An alternative explanation of the Kings alleged failure to see the dumb-show appeals to the nature of the Elizabethan stage if the dumb-show were acted on the inner stage (Sisson The Mouse-trap Again RES XVI 129-36) or on the upper stage (Flatter Hamlets Father pp 40-59) it would be easy enough for the royal party to be placed where it was out of view But apart from recent scepticism about the existence of these physical features of the Elizabethan playhouse they cannot be used to account for happenings in the imaginary world of the play without adding a further dimension to the confusion of fact and fiction Nor need we suppose with a reviewer of Dover Wilsons book that the afternoon light in Elsinore was dim (NampQ CLXIX

30 5) The hypothesis that Claudius though he must have seen the

dumb-show did not recognize in it the representation of his crime (2) was elaborated in a notorious article by Greg (Hamlets Hallucination MLR XII 393-421) who maintained that what disturbed the King at the performance of the play was the menacing behaviour of Hamlet and not the sight of the poisoning which by itself had left him unmoved and that since it had left him unmoved he could not have committed the murder in the manner represented wherefore the account of it given by the Ghost was a figment of Hamlets brain Were it not for the controversy it provoked one would hardly have thought this ingenious deduction in need of serious confutation The play obviously expects us to accept that the Kings conscience is caught upon the talk of the poisoning ( 283) and accordingly to join with Hamlet in taking the ghostS word ( 280) But perhaps the fundamental objection to Gregs case is its pointlessness With the Ghosts main charge confirmed by the Kings solemn conshyfession that he did the murder (III iii 54) the precise method of his doing it for all its picturesque horror does not affect the essential plot of fratricide and vengeance

Nevertheless the idea that what the King succumbs to is Hamlets menacing behaviour has been incorporated in other explanations Claudius it is said could endure the spectacle of his crime not only in the dumb-show but in the play itself only to break at Hamlets accusing fury (SS 3 2 151- 61) But this is

502 HAMLET [Ill ii

whose conscience is so well caught when he sees his crime reshyenacted in the play remains unmoved by the dumb-show One answer has perhaps just been suggested A few scholars have supposed a textual anomaly whereby alternative versions are conflated (eg W J Lawrence in Life and Letters v 333-40 M H Dodds NampQ CLXIX 334-5) but most attempt a rational account of the Kings conduct which will square with the double representation Their explanations belong to three kinds (I) Since Claudius showed no reaction to the first representation of the murder it follows that he could not have seen the dumb-show (2) Since he was present he must be supposed to have seen it and it follows that he did not recognize what he saw (3) Since he must have both seen and recognized it it follows that he was strong enough to stand the sight of his crime once but not twice This last (3) the psychological explanation often called the second tooth theory is both the simplest and the one traditionshyally most favoured (Good exponents of it include W W Lawshyrence The Play-Scene in Hamlet]EGP XVIII 1-22 and Hamlet and the Mousetrap PMLA L1V 709-35 A Hart Once More the Mouse-trap RES XVII 11-20 Granville-Barker Prefaces III

89-93) In a court of law compelled to make deductions about fact from circumstantial evidence it is difficult to see what other conclusion could be reached Yet if this had been what the dramatist meant us to understand he could easily have given the King an aside (like that at lII i50 for instance) to show the first tooth hurting and he did not The trouble with all these theories is that they make additions to the text or at least assumptions for which the text gives no warrant They all apply to imaginary events the kind of rational inference appropriate only in the real world In a work of fiction what we do not know because the fiction does not tell us cannot be presumed to exist This is the basic objection to the suggestion that the King did not observe the dumb-show (I ) Tiecks idea that he was too absorbed in talk was revived by Halliwell-Phillipps who asked Is it allowshyable to direct that the King and Queen are whispering confishydentially to each other during the dumb-show and so escape a sight of it And this suggestion was taken up and insisted on by Dover Wilson (WHH pp 49-53 158-60 183-4) who wrote it into the stage-directions of his edition (pp 68-9 200-1) which has since been often followed on the stage and with unfortunate results for a King who whispers instead of watching can only divert the attention of the audience from the dumb-show which was put in for their benefit It is true that the sophisticated

133 SD] LONGER NOTES 50 3 modern theatre-goer not needing the dumb-show to inform him is likely in any case to watch the King not merely in order to note how he is taking it but to see which critical theory the proshyduction has elected for Yet this unholy legacy of criticism one would if such a thing were possible do better to renounce

An alternative explanation of the Kings alleged failure to see the dumb-show appeals to the nature of the Elizabethan stage if the dumb-show were acted on the inner stage (Sisson The Mouse-trap Again RES XVI 129-36) or on the upper stage (Flatter Hamlets Father pp 40-59) it would be easy enough for the royal party to be placed where it was out of view But apart from recent scepticism about the existence of these physical features of the Elizabethan playhouse they cannot be used to account for happenings in the imaginary world of the play without adding a further dimension to the confusion of fact and fiction Nor need we suppose with a reviewer of Dover Wilsons book that the afternoon light in Elsinore was dim (NampQ CLXIX

30 5) The hypothesis that Claudius though he must have seen the

dumb-show did not recognize in it the representation of his crime (2) was elaborated in a notorious article by Greg (Hamlets Hallucination MLR XII 393-421) who maintained that what disturbed the King at the performance of the play was the menacing behaviour of Hamlet and not the sight of the poisoning which by itself had left him unmoved and that since it had left him unmoved he could not have committed the murder in the manner represented wherefore the account of it given by the Ghost was a figment of Hamlets brain Were it not for the controversy it provoked one would hardly have thought this ingenious deduction in need of serious confutation The play obviously expects us to accept that the Kings conscience is caught upon the talk of the poisoning ( 283) and accordingly to join with Hamlet in taking the ghostS word ( 280) But perhaps the fundamental objection to Gregs case is its pointlessness With the Ghosts main charge confirmed by the Kings solemn conshyfession that he did the murder (III iii 54) the precise method of his doing it for all its picturesque horror does not affect the essential plot of fratricide and vengeance

Nevertheless the idea that what the King succumbs to is Hamlets menacing behaviour has been incorporated in other explanations Claudius it is said could endure the spectacle of his crime not only in the dumb-show but in the play itself only to break at Hamlets accusing fury (SS 3 2 151- 61) But this is

HAMLET50 4 no more than a variant of the second tooth theory with the additional objection that it distorts the whole dramatic pattern in which the expectation created by II ii 584-94 that Claudius will be struck by the cunning of the scene is now (III ii 265-84) regarded as fulfilled thanks to Hamlets theatrical achievement

There is somewhat more to be said for a theory that Claudius did not recognize the significance of the dumb-show because of the stylized way in which dumb-shows were performed (cf Granville-Barker p 91) They were often enigmatic not to say inexplicable (I 12) without the guidance of a presenter such as Ophelia expects (I 139) and does not get (see I 137n ) wherefore Alice Walker supposes that the Hamlet dumb-show was probably presented in such a way as to leave no one much the wiser conshycerning its significance (MLR XXXI 513-17 Cf Mehl pp I 17-18) This theory has at least the merit of recognizing dramatic convention yet its appeal is still to literalism instead of to the nature of dramatic illusion If no one is the wiser for the dumbshyshow it will defeat its purpose however it is performed its purport must be made clear to us the audience though we may simultaneously accept that it is not clear to the play-audience on the stage This is the principle of double consciousness as well explained by Bethell (Shakespeare and the Popular Dramatic Tradishytion pp 156-60) and it is of course the same principle as operates in so familiar a dramatic convention as disguise So using Ophelia (who better) as representative of the innocent playshyaudience the dramatist simultaneously shows her puzzled by the dumb-show (II 134-9) and confirms us in our own surmise that it imports the argument of the play Yet there is still a further element which Bethell does not acknowledge and which the principle of double consciousness is inadequate to explain There are limits to the willing suspension of disbelief what we easily allow to Ophelia who knows nothing of the murder would be incredible in the King aware not only of the crime but of its highly unusual method It is surely not an oversight but Shakeshyspeares dramatic tact which leaves the King out of the dialogue at this stage how he reacted to the dumb-show is a question the play not only does not answer but is careful not to ask And though it reckons without the critic in the study it counts on the spectator in the theatre not to ask the question either He will see the Kings suspicions rising first in the questions of II 227- 8 the numerous critical accounts of a tense struggle going on before that between the King and Hamlet or within the King himself describe what is in the critics minds and not in the play at all

LONGER NOTES 50 5 The problem which is thus strictly speaking no problem may

nevertheless present itself I suppose to the producer and still more to him that plays the King How should the actor behave during the dumb-show Ifhe wishes to be faithful to Shakespeare as many do not he will neither blench at seeing the dumb-show nor whisper so as not to see it To the curious spectators eye giving no more clue than the text does he must remain inshyscrutable

(A recent review of various theories is in W W Robson Did the King see the Dumb-show Edinburgh 1975 which leaves howshyever the specific issue unresolved )

III ii 135 miching malicho] Heavy weather has been made of this aggravated by the practice of lumping the two words together as though they were one indivisible phrase Miching at least (though OED for no discernible reason stops short of certainty) is perfectly straightforward - a present participle formation from the common verb to mich lurk be (furtively) up to mischief still apparently current in some dialects alongside the related mooch (see Eng Dialect Dictionary) and meech (see Webster) Cf Anon Woodstock I 2649 (one murderer to another) Come ye miching rascal Heywood A Woman Killed with Kindness II iii 179 I never lookd for better of that rascal Since he came miching first into our house Further confirmation if such were necessary comes from Florio (A World of Words Acciapinare) to miche to shrug or sneake in some corner Cotgrave (under recuict) miching dodging and Minsheu To Miche or secretly to hide himshyselfe out of the way as Truants doe from schoole It seems to be in the common sense of truant mischievous skulker that Shakeshyspeare uses the noun micher in I H4 II iv 396 In Massinger A Very Woman v iii 34 a slave notorious for villainous tricks is called you micher

The interpretation of malicho permits less certainty though it need call for no serious doubt I t has long been taken to represen t the Spanish malhecho malefaction mischief which Kittredge therefore reads the compromise spelling mallecho has been tradishytional since Malone When OED remarks that there is no evidence that the Sp word was familiar in English it ignores (I) the possible significance of the h spelling in Fs substitution of Malicho for the presumably phonetic Mallico ofQI Q2 and (2) the parallel in ShirleyS Gentleman of Venice (QI655) where Nfalligo would appear to be a further variant of the same word Be humble Thou man of Malligo or thou dyest (miv 125) This