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Your grace hath laid the odds o' the weaker side.

When the odds were on the side of Laertes, who was to hit Hamlet twelve times to nine, it was perhaps the author's slip.

V.ii.310 (340,7) you make a wanton of me] A wanton was, a man feeble and effeminate. In Cymbeline, Imogen says,

"I am not so citizen a wanton,

To die, ere I be sick."

V.ii.346 (342,8) That are but mutes or audience to this act] That are either mere auditors of this catastrophe, or at most only mute performers, that fill the stage without any part in the action.

V.ii.375 (344,2) This quarry cries, on havock!] Hanmer reads,

—cries out, havock!

To cry on, was to exclaim against. I suppose, when unfair sportsmen destroyed more quarry or game than was reasonable, the censure was to cry, Havock.

(346) General Observation. If the dramas of Shakespeare were to be characterised, each by the particular excellence which distinguishes it from the rest, we must allow to the tragedy of Hamlet the praise of variety. The incidents are so numerous, that the argument of the play would make a long tale. The scenes are interchangeably diversified with merriment and solemnity; with merriment that includes judicious and instructive observations, and solemnity, not strained by poetical violence above the natural sentiments of man. New characters appear from time to time in continual succession, exhibiting various forms of life and particular modes of conversation. The pretended madness of Hamlet causes much mirth, the mournful distraction of Ophelia fills the heart with tenderness, and every personage produces the effect intended, from the apparition that in the first act chills the blood with horror, to the fop in the last, that exposes affectation to just contempt. The conduct is perhaps not wholly secure against objections. The action is indeed for the most part in continual progression, but there are some scenes which neither forward nor retard it. Of the feigned madness of Hamlet there appears no adequate cause, for he does nothing which he might not have done with the reputation of sanity. He plays the madman most, when he treats Ophelia with so much rudeness, which seems to be useless and wanton cruelty.

Hamlet is, through the whole play, rather an instrument than an agent. After he has, by the stratagem of the play, convicted the king, he makes no attempt to punish him, and his death is at last effected by an incident which Hamlet had no part in producing.

The catastrophe is not very happily produced; the exchange of weapons is rather an expedient of necessity, than a stroke of art. A scheme might easily have been formed to kill Hamlet with the dagger, and Laertes with the bowl.

The poet is accused of having shewn little regard to poetical justice, and may be charged with equal neglect of poetical probability. The apparition left the regions of the dead to little purpose; the revenge which he demands is not obtained, but by the death of him that was required to take it; and the gratification which would arise from the destruction of an usurper and a murderer, is abated by the untimely death of Ophelia, the young, the beautiful, the harmless, and the pious.

OTHELLO

I.i.20 (358,4)

One Michael Cassio, a Florentine,

A fellow almost damn'd in a fair wife]

This is one of the passages which must for the present be resigned to corruption and obscurity. I have nothing that I can, with any approach to confidence, propose. I cannot think it very plain from Act 3. Scene 1. that Cassio was or was not a Florentine.

I.i.30 (361,6) must be belee'd and calm'd] [—must be LED and calm'd. So the old quarto. The first folio reads belee'd: but that spoils the measure. I read LET, hindered. WARBURTON.] Belee'd suits to calm'd, and the measure is not less perfect than in many other places.

I.i.36 (361,7) Preferment goes by letter] By recommendation from powerful friends.

I.i.37 (361,8) And not by old gradation] [W: Not (as of old)] Old gradation, is gradation established byancient practice. Where is the difficulty?