Those friends thou hast, and their adoption
tried,

Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel,
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd unfledged comrade. Be-

ware

Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,

Bear 't, that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice:
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judg-

ment.

70

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy:
For the apparel oft proclaims the man;
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be:

For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!

80

65. "comrade" (accented on the second syllable), so F. 1; Qq. (also Q. 1), “cowrage.”—I. G.

74. "Are of a most select and generous chief in that"; so F. 1; Q. 1, "are of a most select and general chiefe in that”; Q. 2, “Or of a most select and generous chiefe in that"; the line is obviously incorrect; the simplest emendation of the many proposed is the omission of the words "of a" and "chief," which were probably due to marginal corrections of “in” and “best” in the previous line:— "Are most select and generous in that."

(Collier "choice" for "chief"; Staunton "sheaf,” i. e. set, clique, suggested by the Euphuistic phrase "gentlemen of the best sheaf”). -I. G.

Laer. Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord. Pol. The time invites you; go, your servants tend. Laer. Farewell, Ophelia, and remember well What I have said to you.

Oph.

'Tis in my memory lock'd,

And you yourself shall keep the key of it. Laer. Farewell.

[Exit.

Pol. What is 't, Ophelia, he hath said to you?
Oph. So please you, something touching the Lord
Hamlet.

Pol. Marry, well bethought:

'Tis told me, he hath very oft of late

90

Given private time to you, and you yourself Have of your audience been most free and bounteous:

If it be so-as so 'tis put on me,

And that in way of caution-I must tell you, You do not understand yourself so clearly As it behoves my daughter and your honor. What is between you? give me up the truth. Oph. He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders Of his affection to me. Pol. Affection! pooh! you speak like a green girl, Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.

100

Do you believe his tenders, as you call them? Oph. I do not know, my lord, what I should think. Pol. Marry, I'll teach you: think yourself a baby,

That you have ta'en these tenders for true pay, Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly;

Or-not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,

Running it thus-you 'll tender me a fool. Oph. My lord, he hath importuned me with love

In honorable fashion.

110

Pol. Aye, fashion you may call it; go to, go to. Oph. And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,

With almos all the holy vows of heaven. Pol. Aye, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know,

When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
Lends the tongue vows: these blazes, daughter,
Giving more light than heat, extinct in both,
Even in their promise, as it is a-making,
You must not take for fire. From this time 120
Be something scanter of your maiden presence;
Set your entreatments at a higher rate

Than a command to parley. For Lord Ham-
let,

Believe so much in him, that he is young,
And with a larger tether may he walk
Than may be given you: in few, Ophelia,
Do not believe his vows; for they are brokers,
Not of that dye which their investments show,
But mere implorators of unholy suits,

109. "Running," Collier's conj.; Qq., "Wrong"; F. 1, "Roaming"; Pope, "Wronging"; Warburton, "Wronging"; Theobald, "Ranging," &c.-I. G.

123. "Than a command to parley"; "be more difficult of access, and let the suits to you for that purpose be of higher respect, than a command to parley."-H. N. H.

125. "larger tether"; that is, with a longer line; a horse, fastened by a string to a stake, is tethered.-H. N. H.

Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds, 130
The better to beguile. This is for all:

I would not, in plain terms, from this time
forth,

Have you so slander any moment leisure,

As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.

Look to 't, I charge you: come your ways. Oph. I shall obey, my lord.

[Exeunt.

SCENE IV

The platform.

Enter Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus.

Ham. The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.
Hor. It is a nipping and an eager air.

130. "bawds"; Theobald's emendation of "bonds," the reading of Qq. and F. 1.—I. G.

135. "come your ways"; I do not believe that in this or any other of the foregoing speeches of Polonius, Shakespeare meant to bring out the senility or weakness of that personage's mind. In the great ever-recurring dangers and duties of life, where to distinguish the fit objects for the application of the maxims collected by the experience of a long life, requires no fineness of tact, as in the admonitions to his son and daughter, Polonius is uniformly made respectable. It is to Hamlet that Polonius is, and is meant to be, contemptible, because, in inwardness and uncontrollable activity of movement, Hamlet's mind is the logical contrary to that of Polonius; and besides, Hamlet dislikes the man as false to his true allegiance in the matter of the succession to the crown (Coleridge).-H. N. H. 2. "The unimportant conversation," says Coleridge, "with which this scene opens, is a proof of Shakespeare's minute knowledge of human nature. It is a well-established fact, that on the brink of any serious enterprise, or event of moment, men almost invariably endeavour to elude the pressure of their own thoughts by turning aside to trivial objects and familiar circumstances. Thus

Ham. What hour now?
Hor.

Mar. No, it is struck.

I think it lacks of twelve.

Hor. Indeed? I heard it not: it then draws near the

season

Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.

[A flourish of trumpets, and ordnance shot off within.

What doth this mean, my lord?

Ham. The king doth wake to-night and takes his

rouse,

Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels;

And as he drains his draughts of Rhenish
down,

The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge.

Hor.

Is it a custom?

10

the dialogue on the platform begins with remarks on the coldness of the air, and inquiries, obliquely connected indeed with the expected hour of visitation, but thrown out in a seeming vacuity of topics, as to the striking of the clock and so forth. The same desire to escape from the impending thought is carried on in Hamlet's account of, and moralizing on, the Danish custom of wassailing: he runs off from the particular to the universal, and, in his repugnance to personal and individual concerns, escapes, as it were, from himself in generalizations, and smothers the impatience and uneasy feelings of the moment in abstract reasoning. Besides this, another purpose is answered;-for, by thus entangling the attention of the audience in the nice distinctions and parenthetical sentences of this speech of Hamlet, Shakespeare takes them completely by surprise on the appearance of the Ghost, which comes upon them in all the suddenness of its visionary character. Indeed, no modern writer would have dared, like Shakespeare, to have preceded this last visitation by two distinct appearances; or could have contrived that the third should rise upon the former two in impressiveness and solemnity of interest."-H. N. H.