Your grace hath laid the odds o' the weaker side.
When the odds were on the side of Laertes, who was to hit Hamlet twelve times to nine, it was perhaps the author's slip.
V.ii.310 (340,7) you make a wanton of me] A wanton was, a man feeble and effeminate. In Cymbeline, Imogen says,
"I am not so citizen a wanton,
To die, ere I be sick."
V.ii.346 (342,8) That are but mutes or audience to this act] That are either mere auditors of this catastrophe, or at most only mute performers, that fill the stage without any part in the action.
V.ii.375 (344,2) This quarry cries, on havock!] Hanmer reads,
—cries out, havock!
To cry on, was to exclaim against. I suppose, when unfair sportsmen destroyed more quarry or game than was reasonable, the censure was to cry, Havock.
(346) General Observation. If the dramas of Shakespeare were to be characterised, each by the particular excellence which distinguishes it from the rest, we must allow to the tragedy of Hamlet the praise of variety. The incidents are so numerous, that the argument of the play would make a long tale. The scenes are interchangeably diversified with merriment and solemnity; with merriment that includes judicious and instructive observations, and solemnity, not strained by poetical violence above the natural sentiments of man. New characters appear from time to time in continual succession, exhibiting various forms of life and particular modes of conversation. The pretended madness of Hamlet causes much mirth, the mournful distraction of Ophelia fills the heart with tenderness, and every personage produces the effect intended, from the apparition that in the first act chills the blood with horror, to the fop in the last, that exposes affectation to just contempt. The conduct is perhaps not wholly secure against objections. The action is indeed for the most part in continual progression, but there are some scenes which neither forward nor retard it. Of the feigned madness of Hamlet there appears no adequate cause, for he does nothing which he might not have done with the reputation of sanity. He plays the madman most, when he treats Ophelia with so much rudeness, which seems to be useless and wanton cruelty.