Page 349 - Hamlet: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

242 NOTE S 5-a.

7-11. let us know...we will A parenthesis en-
larging 'praised be rashness.' The sentence 'Rashly...
rashness for it' is continued in 1. 12. For 'rashly' and
'know' v. G.
15. Fingered v. G. The mod. slang 'pinched' is
almost an exact equivalent.
22. such bugs...life Usually explained by mod.
edd. as 'threatening them with such terrors if they
allowed me to live' (cf. 4. 3. 57-64); but the K.
would rather persuade than threaten, and I prefer
Johnson's suggestion that the 'bugs and goblins' were
crimes attributed to Ham.
30. 0r(Q2) F1 'Ere.' MSH.p. 243. The meaning
is the same.
32. wrote it fair Referring to the elaborate Italian
calligraphy employed in state letters addressed to
sovereign princes at this period. Ham. is contemptuous
of a style that marked the trained clerk rather than the
gentleman (v. Maunde Thompson, Sh.Eng. i. 287).
Cf. Florio's Montaigne (i. ch. 39):

I have in my time seene some, who by writing did earnestly
get both their titles and living, to disavow their apprentiss-
age, marre their pen, and affect the ignorance of so vulgar
a qualitie.

Cf. also in the same ch. of Montaigne 'I commonly
begin [letters] without project: the first words begets
the second' etc. with 11. 30—31 above.
42. a comma 'tween their amities Much discussed,
and many emendations of' comma' proposed. But Ham.
talks of writing and speaks as a scribe, a 'comma'
being the shortest of all pauses in punctuation. N.E.D.
quotes an exact parallel from Fuller's Worthies, 1662,
'Though a truce may give a comma or colon to the war,
nothing under a peace can give a perfect period.' The
word 'amities' is ironical, like 'faithful tributary' and
'love between them'; Ham. means that the two nations