The ratifiers and props of every word—
They cry,” &c.
Fearful and self-suspicious as I always feel, when I seem to see an error of judgment in Shakespeare, yet I cannot reconcile the cool, and, as Warburton calls it, “rational and consequential,” reflection in these lines with the anonymousness, or the alarm, of this Gentleman or Messenger, as he is called in other editions.
Ib. King's speech:—
“There's such divinity doth hedge a king,
That treason can but peep to what it would,
Acts little of his will.”
Proof, as indeed all else is, that Shakespeare never intended us to see the King with Hamlet's eyes; though, I suspect, the managers have long done so.
Ib. Speech of Laertes:—
“To hell, allegiance! vows, to the blackest devil!”