And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

Why does the drum come hither?

[March within

Enter FORTINBRAS, the English Ambassadors, and others.

FORT. Where is this sight?

HOP.

What is it ye would see?

If aught of woe, or wonder, cease your search.

FORT. This quarry cries on havoc.-O proud death! What feast is toward in thine eternal cell,

That thou so many princes, at a shoot,

So bloodily hast struck?

1 Амв.

The sight is dismal;

And our affairs from England come too late:

The ears are senseless that should give us hearing,
To tell him, his commandment is fulfill'd,

That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead:
Where should we have our thanks?

Not from his mouth,

HOR.
Had it the ability of life to thank you;
He never gave commandment for their death.
But since, so jump upon this bloody question,
You from the Polack wars, and you from England,
Are here arriv'd, give order, that these bodies
High on a stage be placed to the view;
And let me speak, to the yet unknowing world,
How these things came about: So shall you hear
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts;

Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters;

Of deaths put on by cunning, and forc'd cause;
And, in this upshot, purposes mistook

Fall'n on the inventors' heads: all this can I
Truly deliver.

FORT. Let us haste to hear it,

And call the noblest to the audience.

But let this same be presently perform'd,

E'en while men's minds are wild; lest more mischance,
On plots, and errors, happen.

FORT.

Let four captains Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage;

For he was likely, had he been put on,

To have prov'd most royally: and, for his passage,

The soldier's music, and the rights of war,

Speak loudly for him.

Take up the body:—such a sight as this

Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.
Go, bid the soldiers shoot.

[A dead March. [Exeunt, marching; after which a peal of ordnance

shot off.

VARIOUS READINGS.

"Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds,

The better to beguile." The original has bonds. Theobald suggested the alteration, which is given in Mr. Collier's folio.

ACT I., Sc. 3.

We believe the change is right. The expression is coarse from a father to his daughter; but he has just used "brokers" in the same

sense.

"A certain convocation of palated worms are e'en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet." ACT IV., Sc. 3.

Mr. Collier's folio substitutes palated, instead of the original politic. "If the text," says Mr. Collier, "had always stood ‘palated worms,' and it had been proposed to change it to 'politic worms,' few readers would for an instant have consented to relinquish an expression 80 peculiarly Shakspearian."

The argument of Mr. Collier is a two-edged sword. It makes us hesitate about disturbing an established text. But if palated be a Shaksperian expression, politic is a Shaksperian thought; and is manifestly connected with the idea of "convocation."

"Sweet lord, if your lordship were at leisure."

ACT V., Sc. 2.

The quartos have lordship; and

The corruption, as it is called,

GLOSSARY.

ABHORRED. Act V., Sc. 1.

"And now how abhorred my imagination is.” Abhorred is used in the sense of disgusted.

Affront is used in the sense of confront, meet with. ANCHOR'S. Act III., Sc. 2.

"An anchor's cheer in prison be my scope!"

The use of anchor as an abbreviation of anchoret is very ancient.

APPROVE Act I., Sc. 1.

"He may approve our eyes."

Approve is used in the sense of prove the truth, confirm what we have seen.

BETEEM. Act I., Sc. 2.

"That he might not beteem the winds of heaven."

Beteem is here used, not in its usual sense of to give or bestow, but in that of allow, suffer; it is probably from the AngloSaxon tæman, to witness.

BESTILL D. Act I., Sc. 2.

"Whilst they, bestill'd

Almost to jelly."

To still is to fall in drops; the drops congealed in falling "almost to jelly with the act of fear."

BILBOES. Act V., Sc. 2.

"In the bilboes."

Bilboes are a bar of iron with fetters attached. They are still

BOORD. Act II., Sc. 2.

"I'll boord him presently."

Boord is to accost. See 'Twelfth Night,' where it is spelt board; the orthography varied.

BOSOM. Act II., Sc. 2.

"In her excellent white bosom, there."

A pocket was worn in front of the stays. See 'Two Gentlemen of Verona.'

CARD. Act V., Sc. 1.

"We must speak by the card."

To speak by the card is to speak exactly, on good authority. It is doubted whether the card is the compass, of which the drawing of the points is called the card, or a sea-chart, which in Shakspere's time was also called a card.

CAUTEL Act I., Sc. 3.

"And now no soil, nor cautel, doth besmirch."

Cautel, from the French cautèle, is cunning, slyness. Chaucer used cautele in the sense of craft; and in Coriolanus' (Act IV., Sc. 1,) we have

"Or be caught

"With cautelous baits and practice."

Soil is a spot, and to besmirch is to blacken, to sully.

""T was caviarie to the general."

Caviarie, as it stands in the folio, though generally written caviare, is from the Italian caviaro, which Florio, in his dictionary, says "is a kind of black salt meat made of roes of fishes." It is a preparation of the roes of sturgeons, imported from Russia, and formerly much used among the richer classes.

CHARIEST. Act I., Sc. 3.

"The chariest maid is prodigal enough."

Chary is from the Anglo-Saxon cearig, wary, circumspect; chariest is most cautious.

CHOPINE. Act II., Sc. 2.