Page 50 - Hamlet: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

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

down what they could not fathom at first hearing, conned
them over or discussed them with fellow playgoers at
'YaughanV and other taverns afterwards; and if they
were still baffled, came again and yet again. The vogue
must have afforded much entertainment, and of a kind
perhaps not without its influence upon the takings at the
theatre door.
But many of the sallies, intended to delight and at
times to nonplus the wits of Bankside or Blackfriars, have
become merely bewildering after three centuries of
change in the language, and with the talk of the town—
that amalgam of back-chat, topical allusion and passing
cliche"—faded beyond recall. The modern reader of
Shakespeare needs all the help that can be given him;
and though no editor, even with The New English
Dictionary on his shelves, can hope to recover in full the
luminous clarity and sparkling brilliance of the mirror
in which Shakespeare reflected the very age and body
of his time, its form and pressure, he can charwoman-
likeatleast remove some of the worst of the weather-stains
and brush away a little of the dust. In no play is such
humble service needed more than in Hamlet.
Roughly, and upon no rigid principle of distinction,
words and phrases needing comment have been dealt
with in the following categories: those of special diffi-
culty or dramatic importance, including most that occur
in the speeches of Hamlet, will be explained by gloss
or paraphrase in the Notes; others, of a kind in which
the unlearned may expect help, will be found in the
Glossary; lastly, an attempt has been made to draw
attention to expressions which are especially misleading
because they have altered their meaning since Shake-
speare's day by mention in the notes and reference to the
glossary.
Hamlet's quibbles, or difficult and obsolete phrasing
elsewhere, are, howeyer, by no means the mast trouble-
some hindrance to the full understanding of Hamlet.