Page 40 - Hamlet: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

I N T R O D U C T I O N xxxiii

n
my word (1.5. o); yes, by St Patrick (i. 5.136); I'll loose
my daughter to him (2. 2. 162); I know a hawk from a
handsaw (2. 2. 383)5 the law of writ and the liberty (2. 2.
406); like French falconers (2. 2.434); the whips and scorns
of time (3, 1. 70); the undiscovered country (3. 1. 79);
inexplicable dumb-shows (3. 2. 12); I eat the air, promise-
crammed (3.2.91); I havenothingwith this answer (3.2.93)}
miching mallecho (3.2.135)5 Lucianus, nephew to the king
(3. 2. 243)5 tnese pickers and stealers (3. 2. 337); horrid hent
(3. 3. 88); enseamed (3. 4. 92); lapsed in time and passion
(3. 4. 107); this piteous action (3. 4. 128); the body is with
the king, but the king is not with the body (4. 2. 26-7) 5
a thing of nothing (4. 2. 28-9); a little patch of ground
(4.4.18); nature is fine in love (4. 5.161); O, how the wheel
becomes it! (4. 5. 171); a plurisy (4. 7. 116); a pair of in-
dentures (5.1.107); drink up eisel,eata crocodile (5.1.270)}
a comma 'tween their amities (5. 2. 42); he hath laid on
twelve for nine (5. 2. 168) j with the shell on his head
(5. 2. 186).
The principal reason why so much remains to do in
the exegesis of Hamlet and other plays is that The New
English Dictionary, or The Oxford Dictionary as we have
now been requested to call it, was not completed until
1928. So long as this incomparable editorial instrument
was in process of publication editors naturally did not
take it sufficiently seriously or consulted it half-heartedly.
They tended, for example, to seek help from it only in
the last resort, instead of cultivating the habit of con-
sulting its pages on all sorts of passages which seem at
first sight to be perfectly plain.
If thou hast nature in thee bear it not,
says the Ghost to Hamlet; and what could be more
palpable or straightforward? Yet the discovery that the
simple-looMng word 'nature' may mean 'natural
feeling,' and consequently 'filial affection,' illuminates
not only this line but four other passages in the play*
1
which have hitherto been misapprehended . Editors too
1 2 Z2
v. notes 4.5.161-63; 5* « 9 and cf. 1. z. 1025 3. a. 396.