Page 268 - Hamlet: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

i.5. NOTES 161
the passage is that Gertrude had been 'false to her
husband while he lived' (Bradley, p. 166). With this
view I concur despite the arguments of W. Keller (Shak.
Jakrb. 1919, p. 152) and van Dam (Text of Sh.'s
Hamlet, pp. 55-6). Cf. my article M.L.R. xiii. 140-42,
andv. below 5.2.64 'whored my mother'and 5.2.379—
83 (note). Had the Ghost been speaking only of the
incestuous marriage, the reference to 'traitorous gifts'
and the comparison of the physical powers of the two
brothers would lose much point. Moreover, Tie
Hystorie of Hamblet twice refers in unequivocal terms
to the adultery of Fengon (= Claudius), who 'before he
had any violent or bloody handes, or once committed
parricide upon his brother, had incestuously abused his
wife,' and who had used Geruth 'as his concubine
during good Horvendile's life' (Gollancz, Sources of
Hamlet, pp. 187, 189).
62.* hebona (Q2, £>i) Fi 'Hebenon' v. MSH.
p. 273. Sh. prob. found the word in Marlowe's Jew
of Malta, iii. 271 'The juice of hebon and Cocytus'
breath/ and Marlowe prob. took it from Gower, Conf.
iv. 3017 'Ofhebenus,thatslepytre.' But Gower did not
mean (as Marlowe assumed) that'he benus' was soporific
or poisonous; he in his turn borrowed from Ovid
(Met. xi. 610 ff.), who speaks of ebony as the wood used
by the God of Sleep for the walls of his chamber.
Moreover, Sh. unconscious of these misapprehensions
added yet another by associating 'hebona' with henbane
and attributing to it all the properties which were com-
monly ascribed to the herb (v. Sh. Eng. i. 509 and note
in M.L.R. xv. 85-7 by Henry Bradley, who unravels
the whole history, but is challenged on the last point in
M.L.R. xv. 305-7).
64-73. Tie leperous.. .smooth body The effects of
poison are described in very similar fashion in a ballad
of Deloney's, 'Of King Edward the second, being
poysoned' (v. F. O. Mann, Deloney's Works, p. 405).