Page 43 - Hamlet: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

xxxvi H A M L E T

instances of it in a more elementary form. In Horatio's
lovely piece of scene-painting—
But look, the morn in russet mantle clad
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill—

the word 'russet,' used to describe the indeterminate
reddish-brown or grey of the sky at daybreak, recalls the
coarse homespun cloth, which is its original sense, and
so gives birth to the image of Dawn as a labourer
mounting the hill to his work of the day, his mantle
thrown across his shoulder. Somewhat less obvious and
more complicated is the train of imagery in the lines:
Sharked up a list of lawless resolutes
For food and diet to some enterprise
That hath a stomach in't.
Here, as often, the clue to the picture in Shakespeare's
mind is to be found in other plays. The ingredients of
the witches' cauldron in Macbeth which include
Maw and gulf
Of the ravined salt-sea shark
give us a starting-point, which can be followed up in the
lines of the 'Shakespearian' Addition to Sir Thomas
More, describing More's warning to the rioters of the
effects of social anarchy when 'other ruffians'
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another.
1
These passages , both containing the word 'shark*
together with the epithets 'ravined' or 'ravenous' which
bear the same meaning, show us that voracious and pro-
miscuous feeding was for Shakespeare the distinctive
feature of the shark tribe. The phrase 'sharked up'
therefore means 'swallowed up greedily and without dis-
crimination,' while the notion of feeding has suggested
1
For a discussion of that from Sir Thomas More v. articles
by C. Spurgeon, Review of English Studies, vi. 257 and
R. W. Chambers, Modern Language Review, xxvi. 265,