Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies eBook
Samuel Johnson
Here is one of the few attempts of Shakespeare to
exhibit the conversation of gentlemen, to represent
the airy sprightliness of juvenile elegance.
Mr. Dryden mentions a tradition, which might easily
reach his time, of a declaration made by Shakespeare,
that he was obliged to kill Mercutio in the third
act, lest he should have been killed by him.
Yet he thinks him no such formidable person, but
that he might have lived through the play, and died
in his bed, without danger to a poet. Dryden
well knew, had he been in quest of truth, that, in
a pointed sentence, more regard is commonly had to
the words than the thought, and that it is very seldom
to be rigorously understood. Mercutio’s
wit, gaiety, and courage, will always procure him friends
that wish him a longer life; but his death is not precipitated,
he has lived out the time allotted him in the construction
of the play; nor do I doubt the ability of Shakespeare
to have continued his existence, though some of his
sallies are perhaps out of the reach of Dryden; whose
genius was not very fertile of merriment, nor ductile
to humour, but acute, argumentative, comprehensive,
and sublime.
The Nurse is one of the characters in which the author
delighted: he has, with great subtilty of distinction,
drawn her at once loquacious and secret, obsequious
and insolent, trusty and dishonest.
His comic scenes are happily wrought, but his pathetic
strains are always polluted with some unexpected depravations.
His persons, however distressed, have a conceit
left them in their misery, a miserable conceit.
HAMLET
(145,2) This play is printed both in the folio of
1623, and in the quarto of 1637, more correctly, than
almost any other of the works of Shakespeare.
I.i.29 (147,7) approve our eyes] Add a new testimony
to that of our eyes.
I.i.33 (147,8) What we two nights have seen] This
line is by Hanmer given to Marcellus, but without
necessity.
I.i.63 (149,9) He smote the sledded Polack on the
ice] Polack was, in that age, the term for an inhabitant
of Poland: Polaque, French. As in a translation
of Passeratius’s epitaph on Henry III. of France,
published by Camden:
“Whether thy chance or choice thee
hither brings, “Stay, passenger, and wail
the best of kings. “this little stone a great
king’s heart doth hold, “Who rul’d
the fickle French and Polacks bold: “So
frail are even the highest earthly things, “Go,
passenger, and wail the hap of kings.” (rev.
1776, I, 174,3)
I.i.65 (149,2) and just at this dead hour] The old
reading is, jump at this same hour; same is
a kind of correlative to jump; just is in the
oldest folio. The correction was probably made
by the author.
I.i.68 (149,4) gross and scope] General thoughts,
and tendency at large. (1773)
I.i.93 (151,7) And carriage of the articles design’d]
Carriage, is import; design’d,
is formed, drawn up between them.
