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.