242 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 124. 



Is not all tills one continued apostrophe ? The 

 second line an admirative comment upon the 

 first, and the fourth line, even in the present 

 day, a common exclamation expressive of mis- 

 deeds, or intentions, unexpectedly brought to 

 light? But.it is not this most trite reflection, in 

 the second line, that Hamlet wishes to set down. 

 No, it is the all-absorbing commandment : 

 " And thy commandment all alone shall live 



Within the book and volume of my brain, 



Unmixed with baser matter — 



IMy table?', my tables, — meet it is I set it down !" 



Set it down, m order that the exact words of the 

 commandinent — subsequently quoted to the very 

 letter — may be preserved. 



To suppose that Hamlet gets forth his tables for 

 the purpose of setting down a common-place truism, 

 itecause he has reserved no place for such matters 

 in the table of his memory, is surely to materialise 

 a fine poetical image by contrasting it with a sub- 

 stantial matter of fact operation. 



And to suppose, with Coleridge, that the very 

 absurdness ^f the act is a subtle indication of 

 incipient madness, is an over refinement in criti- 

 cism, as intenable as it is unnecessary. 



Ilanilet evinces no semblance of unsettled mind, 

 real or assumed, until joined by Horatio and Mar- 

 cellus ; and, even then, his apparently misplaced 

 jocularity does not commence until he has finally 

 determined to withhold the secret he had twice 

 l>een on the point of disclosing : 

 " How say you then, would the heart of man once 

 think it? — 

 But you'll be secret." 



Again : 



" There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all Denmark — 

 But he's an arrant knave." 



I do not know whether I am singular in the 

 view I take of these two sentences, but I under- 

 stand them as inchoate disclosures, suddeidy broken 

 off through the irresolution of the speaker. 



For instance, I do not understand the last, as 

 Horatio understood it — " There needs no ghost 

 from the grave to tell us this-," but I understand 

 it as an intended revelation, begun, withdrawn, 

 aB<l cleverly turned off by the substitution of a 

 riillculous termination. It is then, when Hamlet 

 finally resolves to withhold the secret, at least 

 from Marcellus (when or where Horatio after- 

 wards acquires it, is not explained), that he seeks 

 to conceal bis overwrought feelings by assumed 

 levity. 



Such is the way I read this scene; and, while 

 I freely admit the difficulty presented in the 

 fact, that, amongst so many acute students of 

 Shiikspeare, no one before should have seen any 

 difficulty in the usual interpretation of this pas- 

 sage, I must at the same time declare, that I can 



perceive no single point in favour of thut inter- 

 pretation, save and except the placing of the 

 "stage direction" where it now is. But this may 

 have arisen from the early printers being misled 

 by the apparent sequence of the word " that," 

 with which the next line commences : 



" meet it is I set it down 



That " &c. 

 It may be observed, however, that such a com- 

 mencement, to a sentence expressive of wonder 

 or incredulity, was by no means uncommon. As, 

 for example, in the first scene of Cymbeline : 

 That a king's children should be so convey'd !" 



I really can perceive little else than this "stage - 

 direction " to favour the usual reading, while, in that 

 proposed by me, the sequence of action appears 

 to be the most natural in the world : — 



First, "My tables, my tables," &c. 



Next, the continuation of the interrupted apo- 

 strophe, which occupies the time while getting- 

 forth and preparing the tables. 



Next, the abrupt exclamation, " Now to my 

 word." 



And finally, tbe dictating, to the pen, the express 

 words of the last line of the ghost's speech. 



In point of fact, the best possible stage direction 

 is given by Shakspeare himself, when he makes 

 Hamlet exclaim, '■''Now to my word," or, now to 

 my memorandum, reverting to the purpose for 

 which he had got his tables forth. In the old 

 reading, Steevens was driven to explain " now to 

 my word" in this way, "Hamlet alludes to the- 

 watchword given every day in military service." 



It is of the more importance that this point, 

 raised by me, should be fairly and impartially ex- 

 amined, because, being in correction of alleged 

 misinterpretation, its decision must have some 

 influence upon a right discrimination of the 

 character of Hamlet's madness, as opposed to the 

 deduction drawn by Coleridge. In taking it into 

 consideration, the following alterations in the ex- 

 isting punctuation must be premised : — 



After " set it down," a full stop ; after " and be 

 a villain," a note of admiration; the stage di- 

 rection " (writing) " to be removed two lines lower 

 down. A. E. B. 



Leeds. 



FOLK LORE. 



Bm-ning Fern brings liain. — In a volume con- 

 taining miscellaneous collections by Dr. Richard 

 Pococke, in the British Museum, MS. Add. 15,801, 

 at fol. 33. is the copy of a letter written by Philip 

 Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke, Lord Cham- 

 berlain, to the Sheriff of Staffordshire, which il- 

 lustrates a curious popular belief of the period, 

 from which even the king was not free. It is as 

 follows : 



