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To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt]

The performance of a resolution, in which only the resolver is interested, is a debt only to himself, which he may therefore remit at pleasure.

III.ii.206 (252,8)

The violence of either grief or joy,

Their own enactures with themselves destroy]

What grief or joy enact or determine in their violence, is revealed in their abatement. Enactures is the word in the quarto; all the modern editions have enactors.

III.ii.229 (252,9) An anchor's cheer in prison be my scope] May my whole liberty and enjoyment be to live on hermit's fare in a prison. Anchor is for anchoret.

III.ii.250 (253,1) Baptista] Baptista is, I think, in Italian, the name always of a man.

III.ii.262 (254,4) So you must take your husbands] Read, So you must take your husbands [in place of "mistake"]; that is, for better, for worse.

III.ii.288 (255,5) with two provencial roses on my rayed shoes] When shoe-strings were worn, they were covered, where they met in the middle, by a ribband, gathered into the form of a rose. So in an old song,

Gil-de-Roy was a bonny boy,

Had roses tull his shoen.

Rayed shoes, are shoes braided in lines.

III.ii.304 (256,1) For if the king like not the comedy/Why, then, belike] Hamlet was going on to draw the consequence when the courtiers entered.

III.ii.314 (256,2) With drink, Sir?] Hamlet takes particular care that his uncle's love of drink shall not be forgotten.

III.ii.346 (257,3) further trade] Further business; further dealing.

III.ii.348 (257,4) by these pickers] By these hands.

III.ii.373 (258,6) ventages] The holes of a flute.

III.ii.401 (259,9) they fool me to the top of my bent] They compel me to play the fool, till I can endure to do it no longer.

III.iii.7 (261,4) Out of his lunes] [The old quartos read,

Out of his brows.

This was from the ignorance of the first editors; as is this unnecessary Alexandrine, which we owe to the players. The poet, I am persuaded, wrote,

—us doth hourly grow

out of his lunes.

i.e. his madness, frenzy. THEOBALD.]

Lunacies is the reading of the folio.

I take brows to be, properly read, frows, which, I think, is a provincial word for perverse humours; which being, I suppose, not understood, was changed to lunacies. But of this I an not confident. [Steevens adopted Theobald's emendation]

III.iii.33 (262,7) of vantage] By some opportunity of secret observation.

III.iii.56 (263,9) May one be pardon'd, and retain the offence?] He that does not amend what can be amended, retains his offence. The king kept the crown from the right heir.

III.iii.66 (263,1) Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?] What can repentance do for a man that cannot be penitent, for a man who has only part of penitence, distress of conscience, without the other part, resolution of amendment.

III.iii.77 (264,1) I, his sole son, do this same villain send] The folio reads foule son, a reading apparently corrupted from the quarto. The meaning is plain. I, his only son, who am bound to punish his murderer.

III.iii.88 (264,2) Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent] [T: bent] This reading is followed by Sir T. HANMER and Dr. WARBURTON; but hent is probably the right vord. To hent is used by Shakespeare for, to seize, to catch, to lay hold on. Hent is, therefore, hold, or seizure. Lay hold on him, sword, at a more horrid time.

III.iii.94 (265,3) his soul may be as damn'd and black/As hell, whereto it goes] This speech, in which Hamlet, represented as a virtuous character, is not content vith taking blood for blood, but contrives damnation for the man that he would punish, is too horrible to be read or to be uttered.

III.iv.4 (266,4) I'll silence me e'en here:/Pray you, be round vith him] Sir T. HANMER, who is folloved by Dr. WARBURTON, reads,

—I'll sconce me here.

Retire to a place of security. They forget that the contrivance of Polonius to overhear the conference, was no more told to the queen than to Hamlet.—I'll silence me even here, is, I'll use no more words.

III.iv.48 (268,8)

Heaven's face doth glow;

Yea, this solidity and