This was the dialogue as I had written it. The humorous printer added a letter that somewhat changed the sense. He made the line,—
“No, my lord, rather with cholera.”
This was probably an honest attempt on the compositor’s part to work out a “new reading,” and it certainly did not appear to me to be more extravagant than the scores of attempts made in the same direction. If this reading were accepted, the perturbation of Claudius during the players’ scene, and his hasty Bight before its conclusion, would be accounted for.
Another daring new reading in Hamlet was suggested by a compositor, through the medium of a comma and a capital. In the course of a magazine article, he set up a line in the third scene of the third act, in this way,—
Hamlet.—Now might I do it, Pat!
It is somewhat curious that some attempt has not been made before now to justify such a reading. Could it not be suggested that Hamlet had an Irish servant who was in his confidence? About the time of Hamlet, the Danes had an important settlement in Ireland, and why might not Hamlet’s father have brought one of the natives of that island, named Patrick, to be the personal attendant of the young prince? The whole thing appears so feasible, it almost approaches the dimensions of an Irish grievance that no actor has yet had the courage to bring on the Irish servant who was clearly addressed by Hamlet in the words just quoted.
So “readings” are made.
Either of those which the compositors suggested is much more worthy of respect than the late Mr. Barry Sullivan’s,—
“I know a hawk from a heron. Pshaw!”
But if compositors are sometimes earnest and enterprising students of Shakespeare, I have sometimes found them deficient on the subject of geography. Upon one occasion, for instance, I accompanied a number of them on an excursion to the Isle of Man. The day was one of a mighty rushing wind, and the steamer being a small one, the disasters among the passengers were numerous. There was not a printer aboard who was not in a condition the technical equivalent to which is “pie.” I administered brandy to some of them, telling them to introduce a “turned rule,” which means, in newspaper instructions, “more to follow.” But all was of no avail. We reached the island in safety, however, and then one of the compositors who had been very much discomposed, seeing the train about to start for Douglas, told me in a confidential whisper that he had suffered so much on the voyage, he had made up his mind to return to Ireland by train.