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HAMLET.

ACT I.

Scene 1. Page 9.

The reason why the common people believed that ghosts were only to be addressed by scholars seems to have been, that the exorcisms of troublesome spirits were usually performed in Latin.

Scene 1. Page 21.

Besides the hymn of Prudentius referred to in Dr. Farmer's note, there is another said to have been composed by Saint Ambrose, and formerly used in the Salisbury service. It contains the following lines, which so much resemble Horatio's speech, that one might almost suppose Shakspeare had seen them:

See Expositio hymnorum secundum usum Sarum, pr. by R. Pynson, n. d. 4to, fo. vii. b. The epithets extravagant and erring are highly poetical and appropriate, and seem to prove that Shakspeare was not altogether ignorant of the Latin language.

Scene 2. Page 35.

Mr. Steevens says, "there are yet those who suppose the old reading (cannon, in the sense of artillery) to be the true one." He himself was not of the number. It must be owned that fixing a cannon is an odd mode of vengeance on the part of the Deity; yet it is still more difficult to conceive in what manner this instrument could operate in avenging suicide. The pedants of Hierocles, who were the Gothamites of their time, might, if now existing, be competent to explain all this; or, indeed, we might ourselves suppose that suicides could be blown into atoms as the seapoys sometimes are, by tying them to the cannon's mouth, a method equally humane with the practice of driving stakes through their bodies. Mr. Malone's happy quotation has for ever fixed the proper meaning.

Scene 2. Page 40.

The practice of making entertainments at funerals which prevailed in this and other countries, and which is not even at present quite disused in some of the northern counties of England, was certainly borrowed from the cœna feralis of the Romans, alluded to in Juvenal's fifth satire, and in the laws of the twelve tables. It consisted of an offering of a small plate of milk, honey, wine, flowers, &c., to the ghost of the deceased. In the instances of heroes and other great characters, the same custom appears to have prevailed among the Greeks. With us the appetites of the living are consulted on this occasion. In the North this feast is called an arval or arvil-supper; and the loaves that are sometimes distributed among the poor, arval-bread. Not many years since one of these arvals was celebrated in a village in Yorkshire at a public-house, the sign of which was the family arms of a nobleman whose motto is VIRTUS POST FUNERA VIVIT. The undertaker, who, though a clerk, was no scholar, requested a gentleman present to explain to him the meaning of these Latin words, which he readily and facetiously did in the following manner: Virtus, a parish clerk, vivit, lives well, post funera, at an arval. The latter word is apparently derived from some lost Teutonic term that indicated a funeral pile on which the body was burned in times of Paganism. Thus ærill in Islandic signifies the inside of an oven. The common parent seems to have been ar, fire; whence ara, an altar of fire, ardeo, aridus, &c. &c. So the pile itself was called ara by Virgil, Æn. vi. 177:

Scene 2. Page 41.

In further support of the proposed elegant emendation, "Eye shall not look, &c.," this passage in 1 Corinth. ch ii. v. 9, may be adduced, "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, the things which he hath prepared for them that love him." An objection of some weight may however be made to this change; which is, that in recitation some ambiguity might arise, or at least the force of it would not be perceived; whereas the other reading could not be mistaken.

Scene 3. Page 51.

In Taverner's Proverbes or Adagies, gathered out of the Chiliades of Erasmus, 1569, 12mo, is the following adage: "Ne cuivis porrigas dexteram. Holde not forth thy hande to every man. He meaneth wee should not unadvisedlie admitte every body into our frendship and familiaritie." In the margin of the copy from which this extract is made, some person has written the above lines from Hamlet, on which the whole serves as an excellent comment, supporting Dr. Johnson's explanation of them in a remarkable manner.

Scene 4. Page 59.

This word is used in the various significations of a riotous noise, a drunken debauch, and a large portion of liquor. We had it probably from our Saxon or Danish progenitors; and though the original word is lost it remains in the German rausch. Hence our carouse; roister is of the same family, and perhaps the word row, which was very much used a few years since. The Greeks too had their καρωσις, nimia ebrietas.

Scene 4. Page 60.

Thus Cleaveland in his Fuscara, or The bee errant,

Scene 4. Page 60.

As the whole that appertains to this ancient, and, as connected with convivial manners, interesting word, lies scattered in various places, and has been detailed by writers whose opinions are extremely discordant, an attempt seemed necessary to digest within a reasonable compass the most valuable of the materials on the subject. There cannot be the smallest doubt that the term itself is to be sought for in the well-known story of Vortigern and Rowena, or Ronix, the daughter of Hengist; the earliest authority for which is that of Walter Calenius, who supplied the materials for Geoffrey of Monmouth's history. He relates that on Vortigern's first interview with the lady, she kneeled before him, and presenting a cup of wine, said to him, "Lord king, wacht heil," or in purer Saxon wæs hæl; literally, be health, or health be to you! As the king was unacquainted with the Saxon language, he inquired the meaning of these words; and being told that they wished him health, and that he should answer them by saying drinc heil, he did so, and commanded Rowena to drink. Then, taking the cup from her hand, he kissed the damsel and pledged her. The historian adds, that from that time to his own the custom remained in Britain that whoever drank to another at a feast said wacht heil, and he that immediately after received the cup answered drinc heil. Robert of Brunne, in translating this part of Geoffrey of Monmouth, has preserved a curious addition to it. He states that Vortigern, not comprehending the words of Rowena, demanded their meaning from one of his Britons, who immediately explained to him the Saxon custom as follows:

An old metrical fragment preserved by Hearne in his glossary to Robert of Gloucester's chronicle, carries the practice of wassailing much higher, even to the time of Saint Alban in the third century:

The chronicler proceeds to relate a story of this Ynge, who quitted Saxony with several others of her countrymen on account of hunger, and, arriving in Britain, obtained of the king as much land as she should be able to cover with a bull's hide. She afterwards invited the king and his nobles to a feast, and giving him wassel, treacherously slew him, her companions following the example by murdering the nobles. By these means she obtained possession of the whole kingdom, which was from her afterwards called Yngland. This statement is unworthy of notice in an historical point of view, being manifestly a corrupt account of the arrival of Hengist as related by Geoffrey of Monmouth. But the story of Vortigern is not improbable, and has at least furnished the origin of the words wæs hæl and drinc hæl, as used at convivial meetings in this country; for whatever may have been said or imagined concerning any previous custom of health-drinking among the Saxons or other German nations, it is certain that no equivalent term with our wassel is to be found in any of the Teutonic dialects.

Among other valuable remarks that have already been made in some notes on this word by Messrs. Steevens and Malone, it has been observed that the wassel bowl was particularly used at the season of Christmas, and that in process of time wassel came to signify not only meetings of rustic mirth, but also general riot, intemperance, and festivity. In the eleventh volume of Archæologia, the learned Dr. Milner has exhibited and described an ancient oaken cup, formerly belonging to the abbey of Glastonbury, which with great probability he supposes to be of Saxon times, and to have been used for wasselling. In The antiquarian repertory, vol. i. p. 217, there is an account, accompanied with an engraving, of an oaken chimney-piece in a very old house at Berlen near Snodland in Kent, on which is carved a wassel bowl resting on the branches of an apple-tree, alluding, probably, to part of the materials of which the liquor was composed. On one side is the word was̀s̀heíl, and on the other dríncheíle. This is certainly a very great curiosity of its kind, and at least as old as the fourteenth century. Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, in his will gave to Sir John Briddlewood a silver cup called wassail; and it appears that John Duke of Bedford, the regent, by his first will bequeathed to John Barton, his maitre d'hotel, a silver cup and cover, on which was inscribed WASHAYL. During the Christmas holidays these wassel-bowls were often carried from house to house by the common people with a view to collect money. There are, besides, other significations of the word wassel that deserve to be noticed. These are, 1. A drinking song sung on the eve of Twelfth-day. 2. A custom of throwing toast to apple-trees for the purpose of procuring a fruitful year; which, says Mr. Grose, who has mentioned this practice in his provincial glossary, seems to be a relic of the heathen sacrifice to Pomona. 3. The contents of the wassel-cup, which were of different materials, as spiced wine or ale, with roasted apples and sugar, mead, or metheglin, &c. There was also what was called wassel, or more properly wastel-bread, which may be deserving of particular notice, as there is much diversity of opinion among those who have mentioned it. Bishop Lowth, in his Life of William Wykeham, had supposed that the term was derived from the wastell, vessell or basket in which the bread was made, or carried or weighed; an etymology which is with great reason contested by Dr. Milner in his paper on the Glastonbury cup. The latter writer is of opinion, that during the times of wasselling a finer sort of bread was provided, which on that account was called wassel-bread; and other persons had already conceived that the bread in question took its name from being dipped in the wassel-bowl. As a preliminary objection to these conjectures, it must be observed that the genuine orthography of the word is wastel, and not wassel, which is undoubtedly a corruption, and has led to much misconception. The earliest instance in which mention is made of wastel-bread is the statute 51 Henry III., entitled Assisa panis et cerevisiæ; where it is coupled with the simnel bread, which was made of the very finest flour, and twice baked. It appears from the same statute that wastel-bread was next in fineness to the simnel, and is described as white bread well baked. There does not seem therefore any reason for concluding that the wastel-bread was in particular, but in general use at all seasons. We are told by Hoveden the historian, that at an interview which took place between William king of Scotland and Richard the First, at Northampton, a charter was granted to the Scotish monarch, in which it was agreed, that, whenever he should be summoned to the English court for the performance of homage, his daily allowance, among other things, should consist of twelve simnels and as many wastels. In Matthew Paris's history of the abbots of Saint Alban's, p. 141, it is said of the abbot; "Solus in refectorio prandebit supremus, habens vastellum." It is surprising how Mr. Watts the editor should misconceive the meaning of this word so much as to call it a canopy; nor is it indeed much less extraordinary that Dr. Milner, who is so well skilled in ecclesiastical antiquities, should have supposed it to signify a wassel-bowl. The regulation is general, and it had escaped the learned writer's recollection that wasselling was of a particular season; for it could not be applied in its subordinate sense of revelling or rioting, to so grave a person as an abbot. The Doctor might have been misled by the authority of Mr. Blount in his edition of Cowel's law dictionary, where the conjecture on the part of Mr. Somner, that the wastel bread might have been derived from pastillus, is termed unlucky; but, as it is presumed, without sufficient reason, although it may not be the exact origin of the expression. Chaucer, speaking of his Prioress, says,

We cannot suppose that these animals would have been regaled with a food which was set apart for particular festivities, but rather with what was to be procured at all times, though of a more delicate and expensive nature. In short, what seems to be the most probable original of this much disputed word is the French gasteau, anciently written gastel, in the Picard language ouastel or watel, and signifying a cake; a name which might with great propriety have been applied to this sort of bread on account of its superior quality, in like manner as the simnel bread was so termed from the Latin simila, the finest part of the flour. The cake-like form, too, of this kind of bread seems to be alluded to in the following extract from the register of William of Wykeham, which has been quoted by Bishop Lowth for a very different, but, as it is submitted, inapplicable purpose: "Octo panes in wastellis, ponderis cujuslibet wastelli unius miche conventualis," i. e. eight loaves in the form of wastels or cakes, the weight of each being that of a conventual manchet. And to conclude this part of the subject, in the old French language the term wastelier is used for a pastry-cook or maker of wastiaux, where it is not likely that there could have been any connection with our wassel in its Saxon and legitimate construction. What the heralds call torteauxes, in reality little cakes, from the French tourte, were likewise termed wastels, as we learn from the old book on coat armour ascribed to Dame Juliana Bernes, the celebrated abbess of Sopewell near Saint Albans.

The wassel songs were sung during the festivities of Christmas, and, in earlier times, principally by those itinerant minstrels who frequented the houses of the gentry, where they were always certain of the most welcome reception. It has indeed been the chief purpose in discussing the present subject, to introduce to the reader's notice a composition of this kind, which is perhaps at the same time to be regarded as the most ancient drinking song, composed in England, that is extant. This singular curiosity has been written on a spare leaf in the middle of a valuable miscellaneous manuscript of the fourteenth century, preserved in the British Museum, Bibl. Reg. 16, E. viii. It is probably more than a century older than the manuscript itself, and must have been composed at a time when the Norman language was very familiar in England. In the endeavour to translate it, some difficulties were to be encountered; but it has been an object to preserve the whole and sometimes literal sense of the original, whilst from the nature of the English stanza it was impossible to dispense with amplification.

AN ANGLO-NORMAN SONG.

TRANSLATION.

Scene 4. Page 60.

Dr. Johnson has noticed the frequent allusions in this play to the king's intemperance, a failing that seems to have been too common among the Danish sovereigns as well as their subjects. A lively French traveller being asked what he had seen in Denmark, replied, "rien de singulier, sinon qu'on y chante tous les jours, le roy boit;" alluding to the French mode of celebrating Twelfth-day. See De Brieux, Origines de quelques coutûmes, p. 56. Heywood in his Philocothonista, or The drunkard opened, dissected, and anatomized, 1635, 4to, speaking of what he calls the vinosity of nations, says of the Danes, that "they have made a profession thereof from antiquity, and are the first upon record that brought their wassell-bowles and elbowe-deep healthes into this land."

Scene 4. Page 68.

This word is accented in both ways by our old poets as suited the metre. Thus in Sylvester's Du Bartas, edit. folio, 1621, p. 120:

But in King John, Act II., we have,

Scene 4. Page 68.

This interrogation is perfectly consistent with the opinions entertained by our forefathers concerning ghosts, which they believed had some particular motive for quitting the mansions of the dead; such as a desire that their bodies, if unburied, should receive Christian rites of sepulture; that a murderer might be brought to due punishment, as in the present instance; with various other reasons. On this account Horatio had already thus invoked the ghost:

Some of the superstitions have been transmitted from the earliest times. It was the established opinion among the ancient Greeks, that such as had not received the funeral rites would be excluded from Elysium, and that on this account the departed spirits continued in a restless state until their bodies underwent the usual ceremony. Thus the wandering and rejected shade of Patroclus appears to Achilles in his sleep, and demands the performance of his funeral. The Hecuba of Euripides supplies another instance of a troubled ghost. In like manner the unburied Palinurus complains to Æneas.[26] In Plautus's Mostellaria, the cunning servant endeavours to persuade his master that the house is haunted by the ghost of a man who had been murdered, and whose body remained without sepulture. The younger Pliny has a story of a haunted house at Athens, in which a ghost played many pranks on account of his funeral rites being neglected. Nor were ghosts supposed to be less turbulent, even after burial, whenever the party had died a premature death, as we learn from Tertullian, in his treatise De anima, cap. 56, where he says, "Aiunt et immatura morte præventos eousque vagari isthic, donec reliquatio compleatur ætatis qua cum pervixissent si non intempestivé obiissent."

Scene 5. Page 72.

These words have been turned into ridicule by Fletcher in his Woman-hater, Act II.;

Scene 5. Page 72.

A member of the church of Rome might be disposed to regard this expression as simply referring to a mental privation of all intercourse with the Deity. Such an idea would remove the inconsistency of ascribing corporeal sensations to the ghost, and might derive support from these lines in an ancient Christian hymn. See Expositio hymnorum, sec. usum Sarum.

The whole of the ghost's speech is remarkable for its terrific grandeur.

Scene 5. Page 75.

The plant here alluded to might have been henbane, of which Gerarde says that it causes drowsiness, and stupefies and dulls the senses.

Scene 5. Page 76.

Copied, perhaps maliciously, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Double marriage, Act II.

Scene 5. Page 77

It was the popular belief that ghosts could not endure the light, and consequently disappeared at the dawn of day. This superstition is derived from our northern ancestors, who held that the sun and every thing containing light or fire had the property of expelling demons and spirits of all kinds. With them it seems to have originated in the stories that are related in the Edda concerning the battles of Thor against the giants and evil demons, wherein he made use of his dreadful mallet of iron, which he hurled against them as Jupiter did his thunderbolts against the Titans. Many of the transparent precious stones were supposed to have the power of expelling evil spirits; and the flint and other stones found in the tombs of the northern nations, and from which fire might be extracted, were imagined, in like manner, to be efficacious in confining the manes of the dead to their proper habitations. They were called Thor's hammers.

Scene 5. Page 77.

Dr. Grey had ingeniously supposed this word to be a metathesis for henebon or henbane; but the best part of his note on the subject has been omitted, which is his reference to Pliny, who says that the oil of henbane dropped into the ears disturbs the brain. Yet it does not appear that henbane was ever called henebon. The line cited by Mr. Steevens from Marlow's Jew of Malta, shows that the juice of hebon, i. e. ebony, was accounted poisonous; and in the English edition by Batman, of Bartholomæus de proprietatibus rerum, so often cited in these observations as a Shakspearean book, the article for the wood ebony is entitled, "Of Ebeno, chap. 52." This comes so near to the text, that it is presumed very little doubt will now remain on the occasion. It is not surprising that the dropping into the ears should occur, because Shakspeare was perfectly well acquainted with the supposed properties of henbane as recorded in Holland's translation of Pliny and elsewhere, and might apply this mode of use to any other poison.

Scene 5. Page 77.

Many readers may require to be told that eager means sour, from the French aigre. In the preceding Scene it is used in the sense of sharp, and is there properly so explained; but the quotation of the present passage on that occasion seems misapplied.

Scene 5. Page 79.

Heywood, a contemporary writer, has imitated this in his play of A woman kill'd with kindness;

Scene 5. Page 81.

It is remarkable that neither public nor private museums should furnish any specimens of these table-books, which seem to have been very common in the time of Shakspeare; nor does any attempt appear to have been made towards ascertaining exactly the materials of which they were composed. Certain it is, however, that they were sometimes made of slate in the form of a small portable book with leaves and clasps. Such a one is fortunately engraved in Gesner's treatise De rerum fossilium figuris, &c. Tigur. 1565, 12mo, which is not to be found in the folio collection of his works on natural history. The learned author thus describes it: "Pugillaris è laminis saxi nigri fissilis, cum stylo ex eodem." His figure of it is here copied.

To such a table-book the Archbishop of York seems thus to allude in The second part of King Henry IV., Act IV. Scene 1:

In the middle ages the leaves of these table-books were made of ivory. Montfaucon has engraved one of them in the third volume of his "Antiquities," plate cxciv., the subject of which clearly shows that the learned writer has committed an error in ascribing them to remoter times. In Chaucer's Sompnour's tale one of the friars is provided with

The Roman practice of writing on wax tablets with a stile was continued also during the middle-ages. In several of the monastic libraries in France specimens of wooden tables filled with wax and constructed in the fourteenth century were preserved. Some of these contained the household expenses of the sovereigns, &c., and consisted of as many as twenty pages, formed into a book by means of parchment bands glued to the backs of the leaves. One remaining in the abbey of St. Germain des préz at Paris, recorded the expenses of Philip le Bel, during a journey that he made in the year 1307, on a visit to Pope Clement V. A single leaf of this table-book is exhibited in the Nouveau traité de diplomatique, tom. i. p. 468.

Scene 5. Page 85.

In consequence of the practice of occasionally swearing by a sword, or rather by the cross or upper end of it, the name of Jesus was sometimes inscribed on the handle or some other part. Such an instance occurs on the monument of a crusader in the vestry of the church at Winchelsea. See likewise the tomb of John duke of Somerset engraved in Sandford's Genealogical history, p. 314, and Gough's Sepulchral monuments, Pref. ccxiii. Introd. cxlviii. vol. i. p. 171, vol. ii. p. 362.

ACT II.

Scene 2. Page 115.

This is precisely Horace's,

Scene 2. Page 121.

Sere is dry. Thus in Macbeth,

Among the Saxons June was called the sere month. In the present instance sere appears to be used as a substantive. The same expression occurs in Howard's Defensative against the poyson of supposed prophecies, 1620, folio: "Discovering the moods and humors of the vulgar sort to be so loose and tickle of the seare," &c., fo. 31. Every one has felt that dry tickling in the throat and lungs which excites coughing. Hamlet's meaning may therefore be, the clown by his merriment shall convert even their coughing into laughter.

Scene 2. Page 131.

Minsheu says, "To buzze, or hum as bees, buzze, buzze;" and again, in his Spanish dictionary, "when two standing or kneeling together, holding their hands upon their cheekes and ears, and so cry, buzze buzze, and hitting one another a good box on the eare, if he pull not his head away quickly." Selden in his Table talk, speaking of witches, says, "If any should profess that by turning his hat thrice, and crying buz, he could take away a man's life, (though in truth he could do no such thing) yet this were a just law made by the state, that whosoever should turn his hat thrice, and cry buz, with an intention to take away a man's life, shall be put to death." The expression has already exercised the skill of the critics, and may continue to do so, if they are disposed to pursue the game through the following mazes: "Anno DCCCXL Ludovicus imperator ad mortem infirmatur, cujus cibus per XL dies solummodo die dominica dominicum corpus fecit. Cum vidisset dæmonem astare, dixit buez, buez, quod significat foras, foras."—Alberici monachi trium fontium chronicon, Leips. 1698. Ducange under the article Buzi, says, "Interpretatur despectus vel contemptus. Papias. [Ab Hebraico Bus vel bouz, sprevit.]"

Scene 2. Page 135.