In the speech of the Ghost in the second quarto—otherwise of well-nigh identical contents with the one in the first edition—there is only one new line, but one which deserves the closest consideration. It is that which we have quoted—
Unhousel'd, disappointed, unaneled.
The effect this statement has on the course of the dramatic action we shall explain later on. In act iii. sc. 3, where Hamlet's energy is paralysed by this disclosure of the Ghost, we afterwards again come upon a short innovation, and a most characteristic one, though but consisting of two lines.
In the first quarto we see Hamlet, in the beginning of the play, seized with an unmanly grief which makes him wish that heaven and earth would change back into chaos. But a new addition to this weariness of life is the contempt of all earthly aspirations: the aversion to Nature as the begetter of sin. The following passages are not to be found in the first quarto:—
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! Ah fie! 't is an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely.
The scene between Hamlet and Horatio (act i. sc. 4), which in both texts is about the same, contains an innovation in which the Prince's mistrust of nature is even more sharply expressed. These lines are new:—
This heavy-headed revel east and west
Makes us traduced and tax'd of other nations—
as far as—
… The dram of eale (evil)
Doth (drawth) all the substance of a doubt
To his own scandal.
The contents of this interpolated speech may concisely be thus given: that the virtues of man, however pure and numerous they may be, are often infected by 'some vicious mole of Nature,' wherein he himself is guiltless; and that from such a fault in the chance of birth a stamp of defect is impressed upon his character, and thus contaminates the whole.