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Next your Son gone, and he most violent author
Of his own juft remove; the people muddied,
Thick and unwholefome in their thoughts and whispers,
For good Polenius' death; (We've done but greenly,
In private to interr him ;) poor Ophelia,

Divided from herself, and her fair judgment;
(Without the which we're pictures, or mere beafts :)
Laft, and as much containing as all these,
Her brother is in fecret come from France:
Feeds on this wonder, keeps himself in clouds,
And wants not buzzers to infect his ear
With peftilent speeches of his father's death;
Wherein neceffity, of matter beggar'd,

Will nothing stick our perfons to arraign
In ear and ear.
dear Gertrude, this,

O my

Like to a murdering piece, in many places
Give me fuperfluous death!

Queen. Alack! what noife is this?

Enter a Messenger.

[A noife within.

King. Where are my Switzers? let them guard the

What is the matter?

Mef. Save yourself, my Lord.

The ocean, over-peering of his lift,

Eats not the flats with more impetuous hafte,

That young Laertes, in a riotous head,

[door.

C'er-bears your officers; the rabble call him Lord;
And as the world were now but to begin,

Antiquity forgot, cuftom not known,

The ratifiers and props of every Ward; (60)

(60) The ratifiers and props of ev'ry word;] The whole tenour of the context is fufficient to fhew, that this is a mistaken reading. What can antiquity and custom, being the props of words, have to do. with the bufinefs in hand? Or what idea is convey'd by it? Certainly, the poet wrote;

The ratifiers and preps of ev'ry ward;

The meffenger is complaining, that the riotous head had over-born the King's officers; and then fubjoins, that antiquity and custom were forgot, which were the ratifiers and props of every ward, i. e. of every one of thofe fecurities that nature and law place about the perfon of a King. All this is rational and confequential.

Mr. Warburton.

They cry,

"Chufe we Laertes for our King." Caps, hands, and tongues, applaud it to the Clouds; "Laertes fhall be King, Laertes King!"

Quern. How chearfully on the falfe trail they cry! Oh, this is counter, you falfe Danish dogs.

[Noife within.

Enter Laertes, with a Party at the Door.

King. The doors are broke.

Laer. Where is this King? Sirs! stand you all without. All. No, let's come in.

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O thou vile King, give me my father.

Queen. Calmly, good Laertes.

[Exeunt.

[baftard;

Laer. That drop of blood that's calm, proclaims me

Cries cuckold to my father; brands the harlot

Ev'n here, between the chaste and unsmirch'd brow
Of my true mother.

King. What is the caufe, Laertes,

That thy Rebellion looks fo giant-like?

Let him go, Gertrude; do not fear our perfon
There's fuch divinity doth hedge a King,
That treason can but peep to what it would,
Acts little of its will. Tell me, Laertes,

Why are you thus incens'd? Let him go, Gertrude.
*Speak, man.

Laer. Where is my father?
King. Dead.

Queen. But not by him.

King. Let him demand his fill.

Laer. How came he dead? I'll not be juggled with: To hell, allegiance! vows, to the blackest devil! (61)

Con

(61) To bell, allegiance! vows, to the blackeft devil!] Laertes is a good character; but he is here in actual rebellion. Left, therefore, this character fhould feem to fanctify rebellion, instead of putting into his mouth a reasonable defence of his proceedings, fuch as the right the fubject has of fhaking off oppreffion, the ufurpation, and

the

Confcience and grace, to the profoundest pit!
I dare damnation; to this point I stand,
That both the worlds I give to negligence,
Let come, what comes; only I'll be reveng'd
Moft throughly for my father.

King. Who fhall stay you?

Laer. My will, not all the world;

And for my means, I'll hufband them fo well,
They fhall go far with little.

King. Good Laɛrtes.

If you defire to know the certainty

Of your dear father, is't writ in your revenge,
That sweep-ftake) you will draw both friend and foe,
Winner and lofer?

Laer. None but his enemies.

King. Will you know them then?

Laer. To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms, And, like the kind life-rend'ring pelican,

Repast them with my blood.

King. Why, now you speak

Like a good child, and a true gentleman.
That I am guiltless of your father's death,
And am moft fenfible in grief for it,

It fhall as level to your judgment pierce, [come in."]
As day does to your eye. [A noise within.

Laer. How now, what noise is that?

"Let her

Enter Ophelia, fantaftically dreft with ftraws and flowers.
O heat, dry up my brains! tears, seven times falt,
Burn out the fenfe and virtue of mine eye!
By heav'n, thy madness shall be paid with weight,
'Till our scale turn the beam. O rofe of May !

the tyranny of the King, &c. Shakespeare gives him nothing but ab-
furd and blafphemous fentiments: fuch as tend only to infpire the
audience with horror at the action. This conduct is exceeding nice.
Where, in his plays, a circumstance of rebellion is founded on hiftory,
or the agents of it infamous in their characters, there was no danger
in the reprefentation: but as here, where the circumstance is ficti-
tious, and the agent honourable, he could not be too cautious. For
the jealousy of the two reigns, he wrote in, would not dispense with
kels exactness.
Mr, Warburton.

Dear

Dear maid, kind fifter, sweet Ophelia !
O heav'ns, is't poflible a young maid's wits
Should be as mortal as an old man's life?
Nature is fine in love; and, where 'tis fine, (52)
It fends fome precious inftance of itself

After the thing it loves.

Oph. They bore him bare-fac'd on the bier,
And on bis grave reigns many a tear ;
Fare ye well, my dove!

(62) Nature is fine in love,] Mr. Pope feems puzzled at this passage, and therefore in both his editions fubjoins this conjecture. Perhaps, Lays he,

Nature is fire in love, and sobere 'tis fire,

It fends fome precious incenfe of itself
After the thing it loves.

I own, this conjecture to me imparts no fatisfactory idea. Nature is fuppos'd to be the fire, and to furnish the incenfe too: had love been fuppos'd the fire, and nature sent out the incense, I should more readily have been reconcil'd to the fentiment. But no change, in my opinion, is necessary to the text; I conceive, that this might be the Poet's meaning. "In the paffion of love, nature becomes more ex"quifite of fenfation, is more delicate and refin'd; that is, natural "affection, rais'd and fublim'd into a love-paffion, becomes more "inflamed and intense than usual; and where it is fo, as people in "love generally fend what they have of most valuable after their "lovers; fo poor Opbelia has fent her moft precious fenfes after the "object of her inflim'd affection." If I miftake not, our Poet has play'd with this thought, of the powers being refin'd by the paffion, in feveral other of his plays. His clown, in As You Like it, feems fenfible of this refinement; but, talking in his own way, interprets it a fort of frantickness.

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We, that are true lovers, run into ftrange capers; but as all is mortal in nature, fo is all nature in love mortal in folly.

Again, in Troilus and Creffida, the latter expreffes herself concern. ing grief, exactly as Laertes does here of nature.

The grief is fine, full, perfect, that I taste ;

And in its fenfe is no less strong, than that

Which caufeth it.

But Jago, in Othello, delivers himself much more directly to the pur pofe of the fentiment here before us.

Come hither, thou bee't valiant; as they say, bafe men, being in love, have then a mobility in their natures more than is native

to them.

Lair.

Laer. Hadft thou thy wits, and didft perfuade revenge, It could not move thus.

Oph. You must fing, down a-down, and you call him a-down-a. O how the wheel becomes it! it is the falfe fteward that ftole his master's daughter.

Laer. This nothing's more than matter.

Oph. There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember; and there's panfies, that's for thoughts. Laer. A document in madness, thoughts and remembrance fitted.

Oph. There's fennel for you, and columbines; there's rue for you, and here's fome for me. We may call it herb of grace o' Sundays: you may wear your rue with a difference. There's a daify; I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father dy'd; they fay, he made a good end;

For bonny feet Robin is all my joy.

Laer. Thought, and Affliction, paffion, hell itfelf She turns to favour, and to prettiness.

Oph. And will be not come again?

And will be not came again?

Ne, no, he is dead, go to thy death-bed,

He never will come again.

His beard was as white as snow,

All flaxen was his pole:

He is gone, he is gone, and we caft away mone,
Gramercy on his foul!

And of all christian fouls! God b'w'ye. [Exit Ophelia.
Laer. Do you fee this, you Gods!

King. Laertes, I muft commune with your grief,

Or you deny me right: go but a-part,

Make choice of whom your wifeft friends you will,
And they shall hear and judge 'twixt you and me ;
If by direct or by collateral hand

They find us touch'd, we will our Kingdom give,
Our Crown, our life, and all that we call ours,
Το in fatisfaction. But if not,

you

Be you content to lend your patience to us;

And

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