Page 282 - Hamlet: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

2.2. N O T E S I7S

283. your modesties = your sense of shame.
288-90. by the rights.. Jove Cf. 2. 2. 11-12.
290. love, and by what Q2 'loue; and by what'
290-91. by what more., .withal'*= by any more
moving appeal a better speaker than I could think of.
can charge (Q2) F i 'could charge.'
300-301.* custom of exercises v. G. 'exercises.'
Dowden finds the phrase in Bright, p. 126. Cf. note
2. 2. 124.
302-12. this goodly frame.. .of dust This famous
passage prob. owes something to Florio's Montaigne,
ii. ch. 12 (pp. 296-97). G. B. Harrison (Sh. at Work,
pp. 277-78) quotes from W. Parry's Travels of Sir
Anthony Shirley (pub. Nov. 1601): 'those resplendent
and crystalline heavens over-canopying the earth.' But
Montaigne seems the more likely source.
303. a sterile promontory In a 'sea of troubles.'
305. rooffrettedwith golden fire Cf. note 3. 2. 378.
In M.F. 5. 1. 59-60 ('the floor of heaven.. .thick
inlaid with patens of bright gold') the firmament is
considered from the other side, as it were; the stars being
balls of fire fixed in transparent spheres which revolved
within the firmament. 'Fretted' (v. G.) = embossed
—an architectural term.
305-306. //appeareth...but(Q2) F1 'it appeares
no other thing to mee, then.'
307-11. What a piece of work.. .animals Such is
the pointing of Q 2. Cf. that of the F1 text, accepted by
all edd., substituting notes of exclamation for the orig.
queries, the two being alternatives in old printing:
What a piece of worke is a man! how noble in Reason!
how infinite in faculty! in forme and mouing how exprcsse
and admirable! in Action, how like an Angel! in appre-
hension, how like a Godl the beauty of the world, the
Pan-agon of Animals;
This is rhetorical, the declamation of a player; Q2,
without an exclamation of any kind, gives us the brooding
Q.H.-I6