Page 403 - Hamlet: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

296 C O R R E C T I O N S A N D 1.4.

with an Awning of cloaths of Tissue; euery health reported
sixe, eight, or ten shot of great Ordinance, so that during the
King's abode, the ship discharged 160 shot.
Of a previous 'solemne feast to the embassadour'
given by the King, Segar writes:
It were superfluous to tell you of all superfluities that were
vsed; and it would make amansicketo heare of their drunken
healths: vse hath brought it into fashion, and fashion made
it a habit, which ill bessemes our nation to imitate.
These last words come very close to Hamlet's in 11.13-19.
The passages were first noted by Furnivall in New Shak.
Soc. Trans. 1874, p. 512.
27—28. some complexion.. .forts of reason Cf.
Bright, p. 250, 'There keepe the straightest hand, where
the lists of reason are most like to be broken through.'
37. of a doubt Commenting on my conj. emendation
M. R. Ridley ('New Temple' Hamlet) writes:
A flame can be 'douted': but how can a 'noble substance'
be 'douted,' and, if so, by a 'dram'? The sense required
is infection rather than extinction.
But for Sh. and his contemporaries there was one
'substance,' and that most 'noble,' which could be
'douted,' douted by a dram, and douted after a
fashion that was at once infection and extinction, viz.
the gold which alchemists were always trying and always
failing to make in their crucibles. Cf. N.E.D. 'noble'
"]b ('Of precious stones, metals, and minerals'); and
note that a dram was avoirdupois as well as apothecaries'
weight with Sh. Ham. means that the character of his
'particular man' might have been pure gold but for the
touch of evil or weakness which went to its composition
and so brought him to ruin.
43. shape v. note I. 2. 82 (add.) above.
73. deprive.. .reason This warning prepares us for
Ham.'s 'distemper' after the interview in the next scene.

1.5.
11. fast in fires G. Bullough (M.L.R. xxx. 440)
explains 'grossly full of bread' (3.3.80) as meaningthat