PASSAGE IN HAMLET.
"Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
Unhousell'd, disappointed, unaneld'd."
Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 5.
Boucher, in his Glossary of Archaic and Provincial Words (art. Anyeal), has a note on this passage which seems to me to give so much better an idea of the word disappointed than any I have met with, that I am induced to send it you as a Note:—
"The last two words have occasioned considerable difficulty to the critics. The old copies, it is said, concur in giving disappointed, which Dr. Johnson is willing to understand as meaning unprepared; a sense that might very well suit the context, but will not be easily confirmed by any other instance of the use of the word disappointed. Dissatisfied, therefore, with this interpretation, some have read unanointed, and some unappointed. Not approving of either of these words, as connected with unanealed, Pope, no timid corrector of texts, reads unaneld, which he supposes to signify unknelled, or the having no knell rung. To these emendations and interpretations Mr. Theobald, whose merit as a commentator of Shakspeare Mr. Pope, with all his wit and all his poetry, could not bring into dispute, urged many strong objections. Skinner rightly explains anealed as meaning unctus; from the Teutonic preposition an, and ele, oil. As correction of the second word is admitted by all the commentators to be necessary, it is suggested that a clear and consistent meaning, consonant with Shakspeare's manner, will be given to the passage, if, instead of disappointed, unassoiled, which signifies 'without absolution,' be substituted.
"The line—
'Unhousell'd, unassoil'd, unaneal'd,'
will then signify 'without receiving the sacrament: without confession and absolution: and without extreme unction.'
"The unassoiled was no less proper, will appear from due attention to the word assoile, which of course is derived from absolvo; and the transition from absolve into assoyle is demonstrated in the following passage from Piers Plowman, Vision, p. 3.:
'There preached a pardoner, as he a priest were,
Brought forth a bul, with many a bishop's seales,
And saide, that himself might absoyle hem alle,
Of falshode, of fasting, and of vowes broken.'
As a further confirmation of the propriety of substituting a word signifying absolution, which pre-supposes confession, the following sentence from Prince Arthur may be adduced: 'She was confessed and houselled, and then she died,' part ii. p. 108.
"It must be allowed that no instance can be given of the word unassoiled: but neither does any other instance occur to me of the word unhouseled except the line in Hamlet."
B. J. S.