Page 328 - Hamlet: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

4-3. NOTES 221

61. coldly set = undervalue,lightlyregard. v. G.'set.'
63. congruing (Q2) Fi 'coniuring.' MSH. p. 60.

4.4.
Q-66. Good sir.. .nothing worth FI omits. MSH.
Pp. 3°-i-
18.* tf //#/<? patch of ground From July 2, 1601 till
the spring of 1602 the sand-dunes of Ostend were
valiantly defended against the Spaniards in many battles
and with great loss of life by an English force under
Sir Francis Vere, which returned home on March 18.
The siege actually continued until Sept. 1604, but the
London public would only be interested in the earlier
stages. There can be little doubt that Sh. is here alluding
to these events, which points to the late summer or autumn
of 1601 as the date for Hamlet, as we have it in Q2.
v. G. B. Harrison, Last Elizabethan Journal, pp. 190—
270 and Sh. at Work, pp. 279-81. The earliest news-
pamphlet on Ostend was entered in the Stat. Reg. on
Aug. 5,1601, v. A. W. Pollard, Short Title Catalogue,
Ostend.
26. straw I Qz 'straw,'
27-9. This is ih'imposthume... dies Nashe expresses
a similar idea in Pierce Penilesse (McKerrow's Nashe,
i. 211), 'There is a certaine waste of the people for
whome there is no vse, but warre.. .if the affkyres of
the State be such, as cannot exhale all these corrupt
excrements.' Cf. also 'Sedition is an aposteam, which,
when it breaketh inwardly, putteth the state in great
danger of recovery' (Sir John Cheke, quoted in Ben
Jonson's English Grammar, ch. iii).
40-1. some craven scruple.. .th'event Cf. 3.3.75 ff.
event— consequence.
53—6- Rightly to be great.. .at the stake i.e. Fighting
for trifles is mere pugnacity, not greatness; but it is great-
ness to fight instantly and for a trifle when honour is at
stake (after Furness).