Obrazy na stronie
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Enter HAMLET.

Ham. To be, or not to be? that is the question.--. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to fuffer

The flings and arrows of outrageous fortune ; Or to take arms against a fea of troubles, (33)

(33) Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

ded by oppofing end them? I once imagined, that, to pres ferve the uniformity of metaphor, and as it is a word our Author is fond of uling elfewhere, he might have wrote;→ a fiege of troubles.

So, in Mi fummer Night's Dream;

Or, if there were a fympathy in choice,
War, death, or fickness did lay fiege to it.

King John;

Death, having preyed upon the outward parts, Leaves them, invisible his fiege is now, &c. Romeo and Juliet ;

You, to remove that fiege of grief from her, Betrothed, and would have married her, &c. Timon of Athens;

Not even Nature,

To whom all fores lay fiege, can bear great fortune
But by contempt of nature.

Or one might conjecturally amend the passage, nearer tothe traces of the text, thus;

Or,

Or to take arms against th' affey of troubles,

-against a 'ay of troubles;

i. e. against the attempts, attacks, &c. So, before, in this

play;

Makes vow before his uncle, never more

To give the affay of arms against your majesty,

Henry V.

Galling the gleaned land with hot assays.

Macbeth;

-their malady convinces.

The great afay of art.

Lear;

And that thy tongue fome 'fay of breeding breathies,

&c. &c.

But, perhaps, any correction whatever may be unneceffary.

1

And by opposing end them ?---to die,---to fleep----No more; and by a fleep, to fay, we end

The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to; 'tis a confummation Devoutly to be wilhed. To die --to sleep—-(34) ·

confidering the great licentioufnefs of our Poet in joining eterogeneous metaphors: and confidering too, that a fe is ufed not only to fignify the ocean, but likewise a vast quantity, multitude, or confluence of any thing else. Inftances are thick both in facred and profane writers. The prophet Jeremiah, particularly, in one padage, calls a prodigious army coming up against a city, a fea; chap. li 4. The feais come up upon Babylon; fhe is covered with the multitude of the waves thereof." Elchylus is frequent in the use of this metaphor;

66

Box yάp nüμz xeрsaïov spali. Sep, cont. Thebas, v. 63. And again, a little lower; Κύμα γὰρ περὶ πόλιν Δοχμαλή ρων άνδρων

καχλάζει ανοχές
*Αρεος ὀρόμενον.

And again, in his Perfians;

Δόκ μας δ ̓ ἔτις ύποςὰς

Μεγάλῳ ρεύμα

φυλών,

Εχυροῖς ἔρχεσιν ἐργειν

Αμαχον κύμα θαλάσσης.

Ibid. v. 116.

So Ciciro, in one of his letters to Atticus, lib. vii. Ep. 4. Fluctum enim totius Barbaria ferre urbs una non poterat. And, befides, a fea of troubles among the Greeks grew into prover bial ufage; κακῶν θάλασσα, κακῶν τρικυμία. So that the expreffion, figuratively, means the troubles of human life, which flow in upon us, and encompass us round like a fea Our Poet too has employed this metaphor in his Antony, fpeaking 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 fea.

The fame image and expreffion, Lobferve, is used by Beansmoat and Fletcher, in their Two Noole Kingmen ;

-Though I know,

His ocean needs not my poor drops, yet they
Muft yield their tribute there.

(34)

-Tu aic, to fleep;

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,
Muft give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of fo long life..

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,.
Tit' oppreffor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pang of defpifed love, the law's delay,
The infolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes ;
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardles bear,
Το groan and sweat under a weary life?
But that the dread of fomething after death,
(That undiscovered country, from whofe bourne (35)

To fleep? perchance, to dream:] This admirable fine reflection feems, in a paltry manner, to be fineered at by Beaumont, and Fletcher, in their Scornful Lady;

Rg. Have patience, Sir, until our fellow Nicholas be des ceafed, that is, afleep; to fleep, to die; to die, to fleep; a very figure, Sir.

(35) That undifcovered country, from whose bourne

No traveller returns,] As fome fuperficial critics have, without the leaft fcruple, accufed the Poet of forgetfulness. and felf-contradiction from this paffage ;-feeing that in this very play he introduces a character from the other world, the ghoft of Hamlet's father; I have thought this circumflance worthy of a juftification. 'Tis certain, to intoduce. a ghoft, a being from the other world, and to fay, that no. traveller returns from thofe confines is, literally taken, as abfolute a contradiction as can be fuppofed et facto et terminis. But we are to take notice, that Shakespeare brings his ghoft only from a middle flate, or local purgatory, a prifonboufe, as he makes his fpirit call it, where he was doomed for a term only, to expiate his fins of nature. By the undifo Tered country here mentioned, he may, perhaps, mean that left and eternal refidence of fouls in a state of full blifs or mifery, which fpirits in a middle ftate could not be acquainted with, or explain. So that if any latitude of fenfe may be allowed

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:
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, now!·
[Seeing Ophelia:
The fair Ophelia? Nymph, in thy orifons
Be all my fms remembered.

Oph. Good my Lord,

How does your honour for this many a-day?
Ham. I humbly thank you, well;——

to the Poet's words, though he admits the poffibility of a fpirit returning from the dead, he yet holds, that the state of the dead cannot be communicated; and, with that allowance, it remains still an undifcovered country. We are to obferve too, that even his ghoft, who comes from purgatory, or whatever has been figaified under that denomination) comes under reftrictions; and though he confeffes himfelf fubject to a viciffitude of torments, yet he says, at the fame time, that he is forbid to tell the fecrets of his prifon-house. The ancients had the fame notion of our obfcure and twiFight knowledge of an after being. Valerius Flaccus, I remember, (if I may be indulged in a fhort digreffion) speak ing of the lower regions, and state of the fpirits there, has an expreffion, which, in one sense, comes close to our Author's undiscovered country;

Superis incognita tellus.

And it is obfervable that Virgil, before he enters upon a defcription of Hell, and of the Elysian Fields, implores the permiflion of the infernal deities, and profefles, even then, to difcover no more than hearsay concerning their mysteri ous dominions:

Dii, quibus imperium eft animarum, umbraque filentes,
Et Chaos, et Phlegethan, loca no&te tacentia lute,
Sit mihi fas auaita loqui, fit numine vefiro
Pandere res alta terra et caligine merfas.

Æneid. VI.

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. [you did; Oph. My honoured Lord, you know right well, And with them words of fo fweet breath compofed, 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 honesty?

Ham. Ay, truly; (36) for the power of beauty will fooner transform honefty from what it is to a bawd, than the force of honesty can tranflate beauty into its likeness. This was fometime a pa

(36) Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will foaner transform horefty from what it is to a bawd, &c.] Our Author has twice before, is his As you like it, played with a fentiment bordering upon this;

Celia. 'Tis true, for those that she makes fair, the scarces makes honeft; and thofe that she makes bonest, the makes very ill-favoured.

And again;

Audr. Would you not have me honeft?

Clown. No truly, unless thou wert hard favoured; for benefly, coupled to beauty, is to have honey a fauce to fugar. The foundation of both paffages may poffibly have been

of claffical extraction:

Lis eft cum forma magna pudicitiæ

Rara eft aleo conciraia forma

Aue pudicitiæ.

Ovid.

Juvenal.

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