TRANSLATION.
Lordings, from a distant home,
To seek old Christmas we are come,
Who loves our minstrelsy:
And here, unless report mis-say,
The grey-beard dwells; and on this day
Keeps yearly wassel, ever gay,
With festive mirth and glee.
To all who honour Christmas, and commend our lays,
Love will his blessings send, and crown with joy their days.[23]
Lordings list, for we tell you true;
Christmas loves the jolly crew
That cloudy care defy:
His liberal board is deftly spread
With manchet loaves and wastel-bread;
His guests with fish and flesh are fed,
Nor lack the stately pye.[24]
Lordings, you know that far and near
The saying is, "Who gives good cheer,
And freely spends his treasure;
On him will bounteous heaven bestow
Twice treble blessings here below,
His happy hours shall sweetly flow
In never-ceasing pleasure."
Lordings, believe us, knaves abound;
In every place are flatterers found;
May all their arts be vain!
But chiefly from these scenes of joy
Chase sordid souls that mirth annoy,
And all who with their base alloy
Turn pleasure into pain.
Christmas quaffs our English wines,[25]
Nor Gascoigne juice, nor French declines,
Nor liquor of Anjou:
He puts th' insidious goblet round,
Till all the guests in sleep are drown'd,
Then wakes 'em with the tabor's sound,
And plays the prank anew.
Lordings, it is our host's command,
And Christmas joins him hand in hand,
To drain the brimming bowl:
And I'll be foremost to obey;
Then pledge me sirs, and drink away,
For Christmas revels here to day,
And sways without control.
Now WASSEL to you all! and merry may ye be!
But foul that wight befall, who DRINKS not HEALTH to me!
Scene 4. Page 60.
Ham. This heavy-headed revel, east and west,
Makes us traduc'd, and tax'd of other nations:
They clepe us drunkards.
Dr. Johnson has noticed the frequent allusions in this play to the king's intemperance, a failing that seems to have been too common among the Danish sovereigns as well as their subjects. A lively French traveller being asked what he had seen in Denmark, replied, "rien de singulier, sinon qu'on y chante tous les jours, le roy boit;" alluding to the French mode of celebrating Twelfth-day. See De Brieux, Origines de quelques coutûmes, p. 56. Heywood in his Philocothonista, or The drunkard opened, dissected, and anatomized, 1635, 4to, speaking of what he calls the vinosity of nations, says of the Danes, that "they have made a profession thereof from antiquity, and are the first upon record that brought their wassell-bowles and elbowe-deep healthes into this land."
Scene 4. Page 68.
Ham. That thou, dead corse, again, in cómplete steel——
This word is accented in both ways by our old poets as suited the metre. Thus in Sylvester's Du Bartas, edit. folio, 1621, p. 120:
"Who arms himself so cómplete every way."
But in King John, Act II., we have,
"Such as she is, in beauty, virtue, birth,
Is the young Dauphin, every way compléte:
If not compléte, oh say, he is not she."
Scene 4. Page 68.
Ham. Say why is this, wherefore, what should we do?
This interrogation is perfectly consistent with the opinions entertained by our forefathers concerning ghosts, which they believed had some particular motive for quitting the mansions of the dead; such as a desire that their bodies, if unburied, should receive Christian rites of sepulture; that a murderer might be brought to due punishment, as in the present instance; with various other reasons. On this account Horatio had already thus invoked the ghost:
"If there be any good thing to be done,
That may do ease to thee and grace to me,
Speak to me."
Some of the superstitions have been transmitted from the earliest times. It was the established opinion among the ancient Greeks, that such as had not received the funeral rites would be excluded from Elysium, and that on this account the departed spirits continued in a restless state until their bodies underwent the usual ceremony. Thus the wandering and rejected shade of Patroclus appears to Achilles in his sleep, and demands the performance of his funeral. The Hecuba of Euripides supplies another instance of a troubled ghost. In like manner the unburied Palinurus complains to Æneas.[26] In Plautus's Mostellaria, the cunning servant endeavours to persuade his master that the house is haunted by the ghost of a man who had been murdered, and whose body remained without sepulture. The younger Pliny has a story of a haunted house at Athens, in which a ghost played many pranks on account of his funeral rites being neglected. Nor were ghosts supposed to be less turbulent, even after burial, whenever the party had died a premature death, as we learn from Tertullian, in his treatise De anima, cap. 56, where he says, "Aiunt et immatura morte præventos eousque vagari isthic, donec reliquatio compleatur ætatis qua cum pervixissent si non intempestivé obiissent."
Scene 5. Page 72.
Ham. Speak, I am bound to hear.
Ghost. So art thou to revenge when thou shalt hear.
These words have been turned into ridicule by Fletcher in his Woman-hater, Act II.;
"Laz. Speak, I am bound.
"Count. So art thou to revenge when thou shalt hear the fish-head is gone, and we know not whither."
Scene 5. Page 72.
Ghost. And for the day, confin'd to fast in fires.
'Till the foul crimes, &c.
A member of the church of Rome might be disposed to regard this expression as simply referring to a mental privation of all intercourse with the Deity. Such an idea would remove the inconsistency of ascribing corporeal sensations to the ghost, and might derive support from these lines in an ancient Christian hymn. See Expositio hymnorum, sec. usum Sarum.
"Sic corpus extra conteri,
Dona per abstinentiam,
Jejunet ut mens sobria
A labe prorsus criminum."
The whole of the ghost's speech is remarkable for its terrific grandeur.
Scene 5. Page 75.
Ghost. And duller should'st thou be than the fat weed
That rots itself in ease on Lethe's wharf.
The plant here alluded to might have been henbane, of which Gerarde says that it causes drowsiness, and stupefies and dulls the senses.
Scene 5. Page 76.
Ham. O, my prophetick soul! my uncle!
Copied, perhaps maliciously, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Double marriage, Act II.
"Ses. Oh my prophetique soul!"
Scene 5. Page 77
Ghost. But soft, methinks I scent the morning air—
The glow-worm shows the matin to be near.
It was the popular belief that ghosts could not endure the light, and consequently disappeared at the dawn of day. This superstition is derived from our northern ancestors, who held that the sun and every thing containing light or fire had the property of expelling demons and spirits of all kinds. With them it seems to have originated in the stories that are related in the Edda concerning the battles of Thor against the giants and evil demons, wherein he made use of his dreadful mallet of iron, which he hurled against them as Jupiter did his thunderbolts against the Titans. Many of the transparent precious stones were supposed to have the power of expelling evil spirits; and the flint and other stones found in the tombs of the northern nations, and from which fire might be extracted, were imagined, in like manner, to be efficacious in confining the manes of the dead to their proper habitations. They were called Thor's hammers.
Scene 5. Page 77.
Ghost. With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
And in the porches of mine ear did pour, &c.
Dr. Grey had ingeniously supposed this word to be a metathesis for henebon or henbane; but the best part of his note on the subject has been omitted, which is his reference to Pliny, who says that the oil of henbane dropped into the ears disturbs the brain. Yet it does not appear that henbane was ever called henebon. The line cited by Mr. Steevens from Marlow's Jew of Malta, shows that the juice of hebon, i. e. ebony, was accounted poisonous; and in the English edition by Batman, of Bartholomæus de proprietatibus rerum, so often cited in these observations as a Shakspearean book, the article for the wood ebony is entitled, "Of Ebeno, chap. 52." This comes so near to the text, that it is presumed very little doubt will now remain on the occasion. It is not surprising that the dropping into the ears should occur, because Shakspeare was perfectly well acquainted with the supposed properties of henbane as recorded in Holland's translation of Pliny and elsewhere, and might apply this mode of use to any other poison.
Scene 5. Page 77.
Ghost. ... it doth posset
And curd, like eager droppings into milk.
Many readers may require to be told that eager means sour, from the French aigre. In the preceding Scene it is used in the sense of sharp, and is there properly so explained; but the quotation of the present passage on that occasion seems misapplied.
Scene 5. Page 79.
Ghost. ... and sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head.
Heywood, a contemporary writer, has imitated this in his play of A woman kill'd with kindness;
"... and send them, laden
With all their scarlet sins upon their backs
Unto a fearful judgment."
Scene 5. Page 81.
Ham. My tables,—meet it is, I set it down.
It is remarkable that neither public nor private museums should furnish any specimens of these table-books, which seem to have been very common in the time of Shakspeare; nor does any attempt appear to have been made towards ascertaining exactly the materials of which they were composed. Certain it is, however, that they were sometimes made of slate in the form of a small portable book with leaves and clasps. Such a one is fortunately engraved in Gesner's treatise De rerum fossilium figuris, &c. Tigur. 1565, 12mo, which is not to be found in the folio collection of his works on natural history. The learned author thus describes it: "Pugillaris è laminis saxi nigri fissilis, cum stylo ex eodem." His figure of it is here copied.
To such a table-book the Archbishop of York seems thus to allude in The second part of King Henry IV., Act IV. Scene 1:
"And therefore will he wipe his tables clean
And keep no tell-tale to his memory——"
In the middle ages the leaves of these table-books were made of ivory. Montfaucon has engraved one of them in the third volume of his "Antiquities," plate cxciv., the subject of which clearly shows that the learned writer has committed an error in ascribing them to remoter times. In Chaucer's Sompnour's tale one of the friars is provided with
"A pair of tables all of ivory,
And a pointel ypolished fetishly,
And wrote alway the names, as he stood,
Of alle folk that yave hem any good."
The Roman practice of writing on wax tablets with a stile was continued also during the middle-ages. In several of the monastic libraries in France specimens of wooden tables filled with wax and constructed in the fourteenth century were preserved. Some of these contained the household expenses of the sovereigns, &c., and consisted of as many as twenty pages, formed into a book by means of parchment bands glued to the backs of the leaves. One remaining in the abbey of St. Germain des préz at Paris, recorded the expenses of Philip le Bel, during a journey that he made in the year 1307, on a visit to Pope Clement V. A single leaf of this table-book is exhibited in the Nouveau traité de diplomatique, tom. i. p. 468.
Scene 5. Page 85.
Ham. Swear by my sword.
In consequence of the practice of occasionally swearing by a sword, or rather by the cross or upper end of it, the name of Jesus was sometimes inscribed on the handle or some other part. Such an instance occurs on the monument of a crusader in the vestry of the church at Winchelsea. See likewise the tomb of John duke of Somerset engraved in Sandford's Genealogical history, p. 314, and Gough's Sepulchral monuments, Pref. ccxiii. Introd. cxlviii. vol. i. p. 171, vol. ii. p. 362.