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His fell to Hamlet: Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
Of unimproved mettle hot and full,5

Hath in the skirts of Norway, here and there,
Shark'd up a list of landless resolutes,"
For food and diet, to some enterprize
That hath a stomach in't:7 which is no other
(As it doth well appear unto our state,)
But to recover of us, by strong hand,

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And terms compulsatory, those 'foresaid lands
So by his father lost: And this, I take it,
Is the main motive of our preparations;

The source of this our watch; and the chief head
Of this post-haste and romage' in the land.

Of unimproved &c.] Full of unimproved mettle, is full of spirit not regulated or guided by knowledge or experience.

JOHNSON.

Shark'd up a list &c.] I believe, to shark up means to pick up without distinction, as the shark-fish collects his prey. The quartos read lawless instead of landless. STEEVENS.

"That hath a stomach in't:] Stomach, in the time of our author, was used for constancy, resolution. JOHNSON.

• And terms compulsatory,] Thus the quarto, 1604. The folio-compulsative. STEEVENS.

•—romage-]-Tumultuous hurry. JOHNSON.

66

Commonly written-rummage. I am not, however, certain that the word romage has been properly explained. The following passage in Hackluyt's Voyages, 1599, Vol. II. Ppp 3, seems indicative of a different meaning: -the ships growne foule, unroomaged, and scarcely able to beare any saile" &c. Again, Vol. III. 88: "the mariners were romaging their shippes" &c.

Romage, on shipboard, must have signified a scrupulous examination into the state of the vessel and its stores. Respecting land-service, the same term implied a strict enquiry into the kingdom, that means of defence might be supplied where they were wanted. STEEVENS.

Rummage, is properly explained by Johnson himself in his Dictionary, as it is at present daily used,-to search for any thing. HARRIS.

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[BER. I think,' it be no other, but even so: Well may it sort, that this portentous figure Comes armed through our watch; so like the king That was, and is, the question of these wars.3

HOR. A mote it is, to trouble the mind's eye. In the most high and palmy state of Rome,5

[I think, &c.] These, and all other lines, confined within crotchets, throughout this play, are omitted in the folio edition of 1623. The omissions leave the play sometimes better and sometimes worse, and seem made only for the sake of abbreviation. JOHNSON.

It may be worth while to observe, that the title pages of the first quartos in 1604 and 1605, declare this play to be enlarged to almost as much againe as it was, according to the true and perfect copy.

Perhaps, therefore, many of its absurdities, as well as beauties, arose from the quantity added after it was first written. Our poet might have been more attentive to the amplification than the coherence of his fable.

The degree of credit due to the title-page that styles the MS. from which the quartos 1604 and 1605 were printed, the true and perfect copy, may also be disputable. I cannot help supposing this publication to contain all Shakspeare rejected, as well as all he supplied. By restorations like the former, contending booksellers or theatres might have gained some temporary advantage over each other, which at this distance of time is not to be understood. The patience of our ancestors exceeded our own, could it have out-lasted the tragedy of Hamlet as it is now printed; for it must have occupied almost five hours in representation. If, however, it was too much dilated on the ancient stage, it is as injudiciously contracted on the modern one.

STEEVENS.

Well may it sort,] The cause and effect are proportionate and suitable. JOHNSON.

3

-the question of these wars.] The theme or subject. So, in Antony and Cleopatra:

66 You were the word of war." Malone.

A mote it is,] The first quarto reads a moth. Steevens. A moth was only the old spelling of mote, as I suspected in revising a passage in King John, Vol. X. p. 466, n. 1, where we certainly should read mote. MALlone.

-palmy state of Rome,] Palmy, for victorious. POPE.

A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,.

The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.

As, stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun; and the moist star,7

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As, stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,

Disasters in the sun;] Mr. Rowe altered these lines, because they have insufficient connection with the preceding ones, thus:

Stars shone with trains of fire, dews of blood fell,

Disasters veil'd the sun,

This passage is not in the folio. By the quartos therefore our imperfect text is supplied; for an intermediate verse being evidently lost, it were idle to attempt a union that never was intended. I have therefore signified the supposed deficiency by

a vacant space.

When Shakspeare had told us that the graves stood tenantless, &c. which are wonders confined to the earth, he naturally proceeded to say (in the line now lost) that yet other prodigies appeared in the sky; and these phænomena he exemplified by adding,-As [i. e. as for instance] Stars with trains of fire, &c.

So, in King Henry IV. P. II: “to bear the inventory of thy shirts; as, one for superfluity," &c.

Again, in King Henry VI. P. III:

"Two Cliffords, as the father and the son,
"And two Northumberlands ;-"

Again, in The Comedy of Errors:

66

They say, this town is full of cozenage;

"As, nimble jugglers that deceive the eye" &c. Disasters dimm'd the sun;] The quarto, 1604, reads:

Disasters in the sun;

For the emendation I am responsible. It is strongly supported not only by Plutarch's account in The Life of Cæsar, [“ also the brightness of the sunne was darkened, the which, all that yeare through, rose very pale, and shined not out,"] but by various passages in our author's works. So, in The Tempest: I have be-dimm'd

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"The noon-tide sun."

Again, in King Richard II:

"As doth the blushing discontented sun,

"When he perceives the envious clouds are bent
"To dim his glory."

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Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands, Was sick almost to dooms-day with eclipse.

Again, in our author's 18th Sonnet:

"Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,

"And often is his gold complexion dimm'd."

I suspect that the words As stars are a corruption, and have no doubt that either a line preceding or following the first of those quoted at the head of this note, has been lost; or that the beginning of one line has been joined to the end of another, the intervening words being omitted. That such conjectures are not merely chimerical, I have already proved. See Vol. XI. p. 376, &c. n. 3; and Vol. XIV. p. 351, n. 8.

The following lines in Julius Cæsar, in which the prodigies that are said to have preceded his death, are recounted, may throw some light on the passage before us:

66 There is one within,

"Besides the things that we have heard and seen,
"Recounts most horrid sights seen by the watch.
"A lioness hath whelped in the streets;

"And graves have yawn'd and yielded up their dead:
"Fierce fiery warriors fight upon the clouds,
"In ranks, and squadrons, and right form of war,
"Which drizzled blood upon the capitol:

"The noise of battle hurtled in the air,

"Horses do neigh, and dying men did groan;

"And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets." The lost words perhaps contained a description of fiery warriors fighting on the clouds, or of brands burning bright beneath

the stars.

The 15th Book of Ovid's Metamorphoses, translated by Golding, in which an account is given of the prodigies that preceded Cæsar's death, furnished Shakspeare with some of the images in both these passages:

66

-battels fighting in the clouds with crashing armour flew,

"And dreadful trumpets sounded in the

eke blew,

ayre, and hornes

"As warning men beforehand of the mischiefe that did

brew;

"And Phoebus also looking dim did cast a drowsie light,

66

Uppon the earth, which seemde likewise to be in sory

plighte:

"From underneath beneath the starres brandes oft seemde burning bright,

And even the like precurse of fierce events,As harbingers preceding still the fates,

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"It often rain'd drops of blood. The morning star look'd blew,

"And was bespotted here and there with specks of rustie hew.

"The moone had also spots of blood.

"Salt teares from ivorie images in sundry places fell ;-
"The dogges did howle, and every where appeared

ghastly sprights,

"And with an earthquake shaken was the towne.' Plutarch only says, that "the sunne was darkened," that " diverse men were seen going up and down in fire;" there were "fires in the element; sprites were seene running up and downe in the night, and solitarie birds sitting in the great marketplace."

The disagreeable recurrence of the word stars in the second line induces me to believe that As stars in that which precedes, is a corruption. Perhaps Shakspeare wrote:

Astres with trains of fire,

and dews of blood

Disasterous dimm'd the sun.

The word astre is used in an old collection of poems entitled Diana, addressed to the Earl of Oxenforde, a book of which I know not the date, but believe it was printed about 1580. In Othello we have antres, a word exactly of a similar formation.

MALONE.

The word-astre, (which is no where else to be found) was affectedly taken from the French by John Southern, author of the poems cited by Mr. Malone. This wretched plagiarist stands indebted both for his verbiage and his imagery to Ronsard. See the European Magazine, for June, 1788, p. 389.

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STEEVENS.

and the moist star, &c.] i. e. the moon. So, in Marlowe's Hero and Leander, 1598:

"Not that night-wand'ring, pale, and watry star," &c. MALONE.

And even-] Not only such prodigies have been seen in Rome, but the elements have shown our countrymen like forerunners and foretokens of violent events. JOHNSON.

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precurse of fierce events,] Fierce, for terrible.

WARBURTON.

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