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V.i.3 (310,1) make her grave straight] Make her grave from east to west in a direct line parallel to the church; not from north to south, athwart the regular line. This, I think, is meant.

V.i.87 (313,1) which this ass now o'er-reaches] In the quarto, for over-offices is, over-reaches, which agrees better with the sentence: it is a strong exaggeration to remark that an ass can over-reach him who would once have tried to circumvent.—I believe both the words were Shakespeare's. An author in revising his work, when his original ideas have faded from his mind, and new observations have produced new sentiments, easily introduces images which have been more newly impressed upon him, without observing their want of congruity to the general texture of his original design.

V.i.96 (314,2) and now my lady Worm's] The scull that was my lord Such a one's, is now my lady Worm's.

V.i.100 (314,3) to play at loggats with 'em?] A play, in which pins are set up to be beaten down with a bowl.

V.i.149 (316,5) by the card] The card is the paper on which the different points of the compass were described. To do any thing by the card, is, to do it with nice observation.

V.i.151 (316,6) the age is grown so picked] So smart, so sharp, says HANMER, very properly; but there was, I think, about that time, a picked shoe, that is, a shoe with a long pointed toe, in fashion, to which the allusion seems likewise to be made. Every man now is smart; and every man now is a man of fashion.

V.i.239 (319,7) winter's flaw!] Winter's blast.

V.i.242 (319,8) maimed rites!] Imperfect obsequies.

V.i.244 (319,9) some estate] Some person of high rank.

V.i.255 (319,2) Yet here she is allow'd her virgin crants] I have been informed by an anonymous correspondent, that crants is the German word for garlands, and I suppose it was retained by us from the Saxons. To carry garlands before the bier of a maiden, and to hang them over her grave, is still the practice in rural parishes.

Crants therefore was the original word, which the author, discovering it to be provincial, and perhaps not understood, changed to a term more intelligible, but less proper. Maiden rites give no certain or definite image. He might have put maiden wreaths, or maiden garlands, but he perhaps bestowed no thought upon it, and neither genius nor practice will always supply a hasty writer with the most proper diction.

V.i.310 (323,6) When that her golden couplets] [W: E'er that] Perhaps it should be,

Ere yet—

Yet and that are easily confounded.

V.ii.6 (324,7) mutinies in the bilboes] Mutinies, the French word for seditious or disobedient fellows in the army or fleet. Bilboes, the ship's prison.

V.ii.6 (324,8) Rashly,/And prais'd be rashness for it—Let us know] Both my copies read,

—Rashly,

And prais'd be rashness for it, let us know.

Hamlet, delivering an account of his escape, begins with saying, that he rashly—and then is carried into a reflection upon the weakness of human wisdom. I rashly—praised be rashness for it—Let us not think these events casual, but let us know, that is, take notice and remember, that we sometimes succeed by indiscretion, when we fail by deep plots, and infer the perpetual superintendance and agency of the Divinity. The observation is just, and will be allowed by every human being who shall reflect on the course of his own life.

V.ii.22 (325,9) With, ho! such bugs and goblins in my life] With such causes of terror, arising from my character and designs.

V.ii.29 (325,2) Being thus benetted round with villainies,/ Ere I could make a prologue to my brains] [W: mark the prologue ... bane] In my opinion no alteration is necessary. Hamlet is telling how luckily every thing fell out; he groped out their commission in the dark without waking them; he found himself doomed to immediate destruction. Something was to be done for his preservation. An expedient occurred, not produced by the comparison of one method with another, or by a regular deduction of consequences, but before he could make a prologue to his brains, they had begun