Ber. Well, good night.

If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,

The rivals3 of my watch, bid them make haste.

Enter HORATIO and Marcellus.

Fran. I think I hear them.-Stand!-Who's

Ber. Welcome, Horatio; welcome, good Marcel

lus.

Hor. What, has this thing appear'd again to-night*? Ber. I have seen nothing.

Mar. Horatio says, 'tis but our fantasy ; And will not let belief take hold of him, Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us; Therefore I have entreated him along

With us to watch the minutes of this night;

* Shakespeare uses rivals for associates, partners; and competitor has the same sense throughout these plays. It is the original sense of rivalis. The etymology was pointed out by Acro Grammaticus in his Scholia on Horace: "A rivo dicto rivales qui in agris rivum haberent communem, et propter eum sæpe discrepabant." Streams are frequently very variable boundaries, encroaching or receding by time or flood on one side or the other, and this is the cause that the term for neighbours, derived from a limit so jealously watched, took very readily a secondary sense by its application to competitors for an advantage.

So the quartos. The folio gives this line to Marcellus.

That, if again this apparition come,

He may approve our eyes, and speak to it.
Hor. Tush! tush! 'twill not appear.
Ber.

Sit down awhile;

And let us once again assail your ears,
That are so fortified against our story,
What we two nights have seen.

Hor.

Well, sit we down,

And let us hear Bernardo speak of this.

Ber. Last night of all,

When yond same star, that's westward from the pole, Had made his course t'illume that part of heaven Where now it burns, Marcellus, and myself,

The bell then beating one,—

Mar. Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again!

Enter Ghost.

Ber. In the same figure like the king that's dead. Mar. Thou art a scholar, speak to it, Horatio. Ber. Looks it not like the king? mark it, Horatio, Hor. Most like:-it harrows7 me with fear, and

wonder.

Ber. It would be spoke to.

Mar.

Question it, Horatio. Hor. What art thou, that usurp'st this time of night,

5 Το

6

approve or confirm. "Ratum habere aliquid."-Baret.

It was a vulgar notion that a supernatural being could only be spoken to with effect by persons of learning; exorcisms being usually practised by the clergy in Latin. Toby, in The Night Walker of Beaumont and Fletcher, says:

"Let's call the butler up, for he speaks Latin,

And that will daunt the devil."

'The first quarto reads, "it horrors me." To harrow is to distress, to vex, to disturb. To harry and to harass have the same origin, from the Gothic haer, an armed force. Milton has the

word in Comus:

"Amaz'd I stood, harrow'd with grief and fear."

Together with that fair and warlike form
In which the majesty of buried Denmark
Did sometimes march? by heaven I charge thee.
speak.

Mar. It is offended.

Ber.

See! it stalks away.

[Exit Ghost.

Hor. Stay; speak, speak, I charge thee, speak.

Mar. 'Tis gone, and will not answer. Ber. How now, Horatio? you tremble, and look pale:

Is not this something more than fantasy?

Hor. Before my God, I might not this believe, Without the sensible and true avouch

Of mine own eyes.

Mar.

Is it not like the king?

Hor. As thou art to thyself:

Such was the very armour he had on,

When he the ambitious Norway combated;
So frown'd he once, when in an angry parle3,
He smote the sledded Polack 9 on the ice.
'Tis strange.

Mar. Thus, twice before, and just 10 at this dead hour,

With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.

8 Parle, the same as parley, a conference between enemies. 9 i. e. the sledged Polander; Polaque, Fr. the old copy reads Pollar. Mr. Boswell suggests that it is just possible the old reading may be right, pole-ax being put for the person who car ried the pole-axe, a mark of rank among the Muscovites, as he has shown from Milton's Brief History of Muscovy.

10 The quarto of 1603, and that of 1604, have jump. The folio reads just. Jump and just were synonymous in the time of Shakespeare. So in Chapman's May Day, 1611:

"Your appointment was jumpe at three with me." "Thou bendest neither one way nor tother, but art even jumpe stark naught."-Baret, B. 486.

Hor. In what particular thought to work, I know

not;

But, in the gross and scope of mine opinion,

This bodes some strange eruption to our state.
Mar. Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,
Why this same strict and most observant watch
So nightly toils the subject of the land?

And why such daily cast of brazen cannon,
And foreign mart for implements of war?

11

Why such impress 11 of shipwrights, whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week?
What might be toward, that this sweaty haste
Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day;
Who is't that can inform me?

Hor.

That can I;

At least, the whisper goes so.
Our last king,
Whose image even but now appear'd to us,
Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
Thereto prick'd on by a most emulate pride,
Dar'd to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet
(For so this side of our known world esteem'd him),
Did slay this Fortinbras; who, by a seal'd compáct,
Well ratified by law and heraldry,

Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands,
Which he stood seiz'd ofa, to the conqueror:
Against the which, a moiety competent
Was gaged by our king: which had return'd
To the inheritance of Fortinbras,

"To impress signifies only to retain shipwrights by giving them prest money for holding themselves in readiness to be employed. Thus in Chapman's second book of Homer's Odyssey:

"I from the people straight will press for you,

Free voluntaries."

See King Lear, Act iv. Sc. 2; and Blount's Glossography, in v. prest.

The folio has, "Which he stood seiz'd on." Moiety, in the next line, is a dissyllable.

Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same co-mart1o,
And carriage of the article design'd 13,

His fell to Hamlet: Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
Of inapproved mettle hot and full 14,

Hath in the skirts of Norway, here and there,
Shark'd 15 up a list of lawless 16 resolutes,

15

For food and diet, to some enterprise

That hath a stomach in't: which is no other
(As it doth well appear unto our state,)
But to recover of us, by strong hand,
And terms compulsative 17, 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 18 in the land.

19 [Ber. I think, it be no other, but e'en 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.

Hor. A mote it is, to trouble the mind's eye.

12 Co-mart is the reading of the quarto of 1604; the folio reads cov❜nant. Co-mart, it is presumed, means a joint bargain. other instance of the word is known.

No

13 Carriage is purport, bearing. Designed is here used in the sense of designatus, Lat.

14 Thus the first quarto. The folio has, "Of unimproved mettle hot and full. The reading of the quarto seems preferable, as the idea excited by Young Fortinbras is of one animated by courage at full heat, but at present untried,—the ardour of inexperience.

15 i. e. snapped up or taken up hastily. "Scroccare is to shark or shift for any thing, to snap. The quarto 1603, instead of a list has a sight.

16 All the quartos have lawless. The folio landless.

17 The quartos have compulsatory.

18 Romage, now spelt rummage, and in common use as a verb, though not as a substantive, for making a thorough ransack or search, a busy and tumultuous movement.

19 All the lines within crotchets in this play are omitted in the folio of 1623. The title-pages of the quartos of 1604 and 1605 declare this play to be "enlarged to almost as much againe as it was, according to the true and perfect copie."