There with fantastic garlands did the come,
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daifies, and long purples
(That liberal shepherds give a groffer name,
But our cold maids do dead mens' fingers call)

There

With cherry lips and cheeks of damask roses,
And we'll all dance an antic 'fore the duke,
And beg his pardon: then the talk'd of you, fir,
That you must lose your head to-piorrow morning,
And the must gather flowers to bury you,
And see the house made handsome: then she sung
Nothing but willow, willow, willow, and between
Ever was Palamo7, fair Pelamon,
And Palamon was a tall young man.

The place
Was knee-deep where the sate : her careless tresses
A wreath of bull-rush rounded : about her stuck
Thousand fresh-water flowers of several colours:
That methought the appear'd like the fair nymph
That 'feeds the lake with waters: or as Iris
Newly dropt down nom s...

rings the made 1
Of ruines that grew by, and to 'em spoke
The prettiest pofies: * Thus our true fove's ty'd :
This you may loose, not me:" and many a one ;
And then she wept, and sang again, and figh'd :
And with the same breath smild and kiss'd her hand,
I made in to her:
She saw me, and straight fought the flood : I fav'd her
And let her fafe to land : when presently
She slipt away, and to the city made
With such a cry, and swiftness, that, believe me,
She left me far behind her : three or four
I saw from far off cross her: one of them
I knew to be your brother; where she staid, &c.

Act 4.

Mr. Seward very juftly observes upon this passage, the Aurora of Guido has not more Itrokes of the same hand which drew his Bacchus and Ariudne,, than the sweet description of this pretty maiden's love-distraction has to the like distraction of Ophelia 'in Ilamkt; that of Ophelia, ending in her death, is like the Ariadne, more moving ; but the images here, like those in Alle rora, are more numerous and equally exquisite in grace and beauty. May we not then pronounce, that either this is SlakeSpear's, or that Fletcher has here equall'd him in his very best manner? Mr. Warburton peremptorily assures us, “the first act only of the Two Noble Kinsmen, was wrote by Shakespear, but in his Wollt manner.”

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There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke,
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brcok: her cloaths spread wide,
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up,
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes,
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element; but long it could not be,
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull’d the poor wretch from her nelodious lay
To'muddy death.

ACT V. SCENE I.

Hamlet's Reflection en Yorick's Skull.' Grave. A pestilence on him for a mad rogue, he pour'd a flaggon of Rhenish on my head once: this fame kull, Sir, was Sir Yorick's skull. the King's jester. Ham. This? Grave. Even that. Hamn. Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times, and now how abhorr’d in my imagination is it? my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kiss'd, I know not how oft; where be your gibes now, your jests, your songs, your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table in a roar! Not one now to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fall’n? Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour, to this complexion she must come; make her laugh at that.

Scene II. A spotless Virgin buried.

(38) Lay her i'th'earth,
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring : I tell thee, churlifh pricit,
A miniftring angel fhall my fister te,
When thou lieit howling.

Melancholy.

This is mere madness,
And thus awhile the fit will work on him ;
Anon as patient as the female dove,
(39) When first her golden couplets are disclos'd,
His filence will fit drooping,

Providence dires our Actions.

(40) And that should teach us,
There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew then how we will.

A licali
(38) Lay ber, &c.] An ingenious gentleman observed to me,
he thought it an overfight in Shakefcar to refuse Ophila all the
rights of burial, as if she had drowned herself, when it is plain
the was drowned by mere accident : the priest says, “ her death
was doubtful, and that it would profane the service of the dead
to sing a requiem in like manner to ter as to place-farhd .
Ophelia was distracted, and not dying a natural death, but ich a
one, as was in some mcafiure doubtful, I think, Sharifpar may be
justified; it is plain however, Lairtes thought it a very uniwir
manner of proceeding with his sister.

(39) When, &c.] Golden couplets means, her two young ones, for doves seldom lay more than two eggs, and the young ones when first disclos'd or hatchd, are covered with a kind of yellow down: when they are fint hatch'ol, the female broods over them more carefully and fedulously than ever, as then they require most fostering. This will thew the exact beauty of the comparison.

(40) And, &c.] This is a noble sentiment and worthy of Shakespear: in the Maid's Tragedy, there is the same thought, but very meanly exprest;

But

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& Health.

(41) Give me the cup,
And let the kettle to the trumpets speak,
The trusnpets to the cannoneer without,
The cannons to the heavens, the heavens to earth.
Now the King drinks to Hamlet.

AEt 5

But they that are above
Have ends in every thing.
(41) Give me, &c.] There is in the beginning of the play, a
pailage like this:

No jocund health that Denmark drinks to-day,
But the great cannon to the clouds Thall tell,
And the King's rouse the heavens shall bruit again,

Re-speaking earthly thunder.
Shakespear keeps up the characters of the people where his scene
lies, and therefore dwelis much on the Danish drinking: in
another place he tells us :

The King doth wake to-night, and takes his roufe,
Keeps waffel, and the swagg’ring up-spring reels:
And as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,
The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out

'The triumph of his pledge.
A custom, as Hamlet observes in the subsequent lines, greatly to

the discredit of their nation, and more honour'd in the breach than the observance.

General Observations.

T

rian.

THE original story on which this play is built, may be found in Saxo Granimaticus the Danish hito

From thence Belleforeft adopted it in his col. lection of novels, in seven volumes, which he began in 1564, and continued to publish through fucceeding years. From this work, The Hyfiorie of Hambleit, quarto, bl. 1. was translated. I have hitherto met with no earlier edition of the play than one in the year 1604, though it must have been performed before that time, as I have seen a copy of Speght's edition of Chancer, which formerly belonged to Dr. Gabriel Harvey, (the antagonist of Noh) who, in his own hand-writing, has fet down the play, as a performance with which he was well acquainted in the year 1998. His words are these: “ The younger fort take inuch delight in Shakejjear's 56 Venus and Adonis; but his Lucrece, and his tragedy 5 of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke, have it in them to “ please the wiser fort, 1598."

In the books of the Stationers' Company, this play was entered by James Roberts, July 26, 1602, under the title of " A booke called The Revenge of Hamlett. Prince of Denmarke, as it wis lately acted by the Lord Chamberlain his servantes."

In Eafuvard Hør, by G. Chapman, B. forfon, and 1. Marken, 1605, is a fling at the hero of this tragedy A footman named Hamlet enters, and a tankard-bearer siks him--- 'Sfoote, Hamlet, are you mad?” The following particulars, relative to the date of the piece, are borrowed from Dr. Farmer's Essay on the Learning of Shakespear, p. 85, 86, second edition.

“ Greene, in the Epistle. prefixed to his Arcadia, hath a lash at some so vine glorious tragedians," and very plainly at Shakespear in particular.--- I leave all theie to the mercy of their inoiber-teng uc, th:t ferd on

nouglc

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