2. Enter Hamlet.

་་

Ham. To be, or not to be? that is the queftion Whether 'tis nobler in the mind, to fuffer Hno wow. The flings and arrows of outragious fortune; Or to take arms against a fea of troubles, (33) And by oppofing end theni?to die,

to fleep

No more; and by a fleep, to fay, we end
The heart-ache, and the thoufand natural fhocks
That flesh is heir to; 'tis a confummation

(33) Or to take Arms against a Sea of Troubles,

Devoutly

And by oppofing end them?] I once imagin'd, that, to preferve the Uni formity of Metaphor, and as it is a Word our Author is fond of using elsewhere, he might have wrote ;- a Siege of Troubles.

So, in Midfummer Night's Dream.
Or, if there were a Sympathy in Choice,
War, Death, or Sickness did lay Siege to it;
King John.

Death, having prey'd upon the outward Parts,
Leaves them; invifible his Siege is now ;; &c. q
Romeo and Juliet.

415

You, to remove that Siege of Grief from her,
Betroth'd, and would have married her, &c.

To whom all Sores lay Siege, can bear great Fortune Davis
But by Contempt of Nature. ****

Or one might conjecturally amend the Paffage, nearer to the Traces of the Text, thus

Or,

Or to take Arms against th' Affay of Troubles,

against a 'Say of Troubles,

i. e. against the Attempts, Attacks, &c. So, before, in this Play; Makes Vow before his Uncle, never more

To give th' Aflay of Arms against your Majesty.

Henry V.

Galling the gleaned Land with hot Affays.:

Macbeth.

And that thy Tongue fome 'Say of Breeding breathes, &c. &c.

But, perhaps, any Correction whatever may be unneceffary; confidering the great Licentioufnefs of our Poet in joining heterogeneous Metaphors;

and

Devoutly to be with'd. To diet fleep

(34)
To fleep? perchance, to dream; ay, there's the rub
For in that fleep of Death what dreams may come,
When we have fhuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us paufe. There's the respect,

and confidering too, that a Sea is ufed not only to fignify the Ocean, but likewife a valt Quantity, Multitude, or Confluence of any thing else. Inftances are thick both in facred and prophane Writers. The Prophet Jeremiah, particularly, in one Paffage, calls a prodigious Army coming up against a City, a Sea: Chap. 51. 42. The Sea is come up upon Babylon; She is covered with the Multitude of the Waves thereof. ÆSCHYLUS is fre quent in the Ufe of this Metaphor;

2

So Cicero, in one of his Letters to Atticus, libavi. Ep. 4. Fluctum enim totius Barbariæ ferre urbs una non poterat. And, befides, a Sea of Troubles among the Greeks grew into proverbial Ufage; wanav Dádasoa, naxav Teinvμía. So that the Expreffion, figuratively, means, the Trouκακῶν τρικυμία. bles of human Life, which flow in upon us, and encompass us round, like a Sea. Our Poet too has employ'd this Metaphor in his Antony, speaking of a Confluence of Courtiers;

I was of late as petty to his Ends,

As is the Morn-dew on the myrtle Leaf

To his grand Sea.

The fame Image and Expreffion, I obferve, is ufed by Beaumont and Fletcher in their Two Noble Kinfmen.

-Tho' I know,

His Ocean needs not my poor Drops, yet they

Muft yield their Tribute there.

(34)

To die, to fleep;

To fleep? perchance, to dream:] This admirable fine Reflexion feems, in a paltry Manner, to be fneer'd at by Beaumont, and Fletcher in their Scornful Lady.

•Rog. Have patience, Sir, until our Fellow Nicholas be deceas'd, that is, ale to fleep, to dye; to dye, to fleep; a very Figure, Sir.

That

That makes Calamity of fo long life,

For who would bear the whips and fcorns of time,
Th' oppreffor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pang
of defpis'd love, the law's delay,
The infolence of office, and the fpurns r
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes ;
When he himself might his Quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardles bear,
To groan and fweat under a weary life?
But that the dread of fomething after death,

(That undiscover'd country, from whofe bourne (35)
No traveller returns) puzzles the will;

And makes us rather bear thofe ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of

Thus confcience does make cowards of us all:

(35) That undifcover'd Country, from whofe Bourne

And

No Traveller returns.] As fome fuperficial Criticks have, without the leaft Scruple, accufed the Poet of Forgetfulness and Self-Contradiction from this Paffage; feeing that in this very Play he introduces a Character from the other World, the Ghost of Hamlet's Father: I have thought this Circumftance worthy of a Juftification. 'Tis certain, to introduce a Ghoft, a Being from the other World, and to fay, that no Traveller returns from those Confines, is, literally taken, as abfolute a Contradiction as can be fuppos'd & facto & terminis. But we are to take Notice, that Shakespeare brings his Ghoft only from a middle State, or local Purgatory: a Prison-house, as he makes his Spirit call it, where he was doom'd, for a Term only, to expiate his Sins of Nature. By the undiscover'd Country here mention'd, he may, perhaps, mean that laft and eternal Refidence of Souls in a State of full Blits or Mifery; which Spirits in a middle State could not be acquainted with, or explain. So that if any Latitude of Sense may be allow'd to the Poet's Words, tho' he admits the Poffibility of a Spirit returning from the Dead, he yet holds, that the State of the Dead cannot be communicated; and, with that Allowance, it remains ftill an undiscovered Country. We are to obferve too, that even his Ghoft, who comes from Purgatory, for, whatever has been fignified under that Denomination) comes under Reftrictions: And tho' he confeffes himself fubject to a Viciffitude of Torments, yet he fays, at the fame time, that he is forbid to tell the Secrets of his Prifon-house. The Antients had the fame Notion of our obfcure and twilight Knowledge of an After-being. Valerius Flaccus, I remember, if I may be indulg'd in a fhort Digreffion) fpeaking of the lower Regions, and State of the Spirits there, has an Expreffon, which, in one Sense, comes close to our Author's undifcover'd Country; Superis incognita Tellus.

And

And thus the native hue of refolution

Is ficklied o'er with the pale caft of thought;
And enterprizes of great pith, and moment,
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lofe the name of action.-Soft you,

The fair Ophelia? Nymph, in thy orifons
Be all my fins remembred.
Oph. Good my lord,

now!

How does your Honour for this many a day?
Ham. I humbly thank

well; you,

[Seeing Oph.

Oph. My lord, I have remembrances of yours, That I have longed long to re-deliver.

I pray you, now receive them.

Ham. No, I never gave you aught.

Oph. My honour'd lord, you know right well, you did;

And with them words of fo fweet breath compos'd,
As made the things more rich: that perfume loft,
Take thefe again; for to the noble mind

Rich gifts wax poor, when givers prove unkind.
There, my lord.

Ham. Ha, ha! are you honeft?
Oph. My lord,

Ham. Are you fair?

Oph. What means your lordship?

Ham. That if you be honest and fair, you should admit no difcourfe to your beauty.

Oph. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honefty?

And it is obfervable that Virgil, before he enters upon a Defcription of
Hell, and of the Elyfian Fields, implores the Permiffion of the infernal
Deities; and profeffes, even then, to discover no more than Hearfay
concerning their mysterious Dominions.

Dii, quibus imperium eft Animarum, Umbræq; filentes,
Et Chaos, et Phlegethon, loca no&te tacentia late,
Sit mihi fas audita loqui, fit numine veftro
Pandere res alta terrâ et caligine merfas.

Eneid. VI.

Ham.

Ham. Ay, truly; (36) for the power of beauty will fooner transform honefty from what it is, to a bawd; than the force of honefty can tranflate beauty into its likenefs. This was fometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once.

Oph. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe fo.

Ham. You fhould not have believed me. For virtue cannot fo inoculate our old stock, but we shall relish of it. I lov'd you not.

Oph. I was the more deceived.

Ham. Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldft thou be a breeder of finners? I am my felf indifferent honeft; but yet I could accufe me of fuch Things, that it were better, my mother had not borne me. I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck, than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What fhould fuch fellows, as I, do crawling between heav'n and earth? we are arrant knaves, believe none of us Go thy ways to a nunnery -Where's Oph. At home, my lord.

your

father?

Ham. Let the doors be fhut upon him, that he may play the fool no where but in's own house. Farewel. Oph. Oh help him, you sweet heav'ns!

Ham. If thou doft marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry. Be thou as chafte as ice, as pure as fnow, thou shalt not escape calumny.Get thee to a nunnery,

farewel Or if thou wilt needs marry, marry a

༽

(36) Ay, truely; for the Power of Beauty will fooner transform Honefty from what it is to a Bawd; &c.] Our Author has twice before, in his As you like it, play'd with a Sentiment bordering upon this.

Celia. Tis true, for those, that she makes fair, she fearce makes honest ; and thofe, that she makes honest, she makes very ill-favour'd.

And again,

Audr. Would you not have me honeft ?

Clown. No, truly, unless thou wert hard-favour'd; for Honefty, cou pled to Beauty, is to bave Honey a Sauce to Sugar.

The Foundation of both Paffages may poffibly have been of Claffical Extraction.

Lis eft cum Formâ magna Pudicitiæ.
Rara eft adeò Concordia Formæ

Atq; Pudicitia.

VOL. VII.

T

!

Ovid.

Juvenal.

fool;