HAMLET
[P. 76.] This goodly frame and Man delighted not. ii, 2, 310-321.
[P. 77.] too much i’ th’ sun. i, 2, 67.
the pangs. iii, 1, 72.
[P. 78.] There is no attempt to force an interest. Professor Saintsbury (“History of Criticism,” III, 258) calls this utterance an apex of Shakespearian criticism. Hazlitt makes a similar comment in the character of “Troilus and Cressida”: “He has no prejudice for or against his characters: he saw both sides of a question; at once an actor and a spectator in the scene.” Dr. Johnson had observed this attitude in Shakespeare, but he had seen in it a violation of the demands of poetic justice: “he carries his persons indifferently through right and wrong, and at the close dismisses them without further care, and leaves their examples to operate by chance. This fault the barbarity of his age cannot extenuate; for it is always a writer’s duty to make the world better, and justice is a virtue independent on time or place.” (Nichol Smith’s “Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare,” p. 123.)
outward pageant. Cf. i, 2, 86: “the trappings and the suits of woe.”
we have that within. i, 2, 85.
[P. 79.] He kneels. Cf. iii, 3, 73: “Now might I do it pat, now he is praying.”
[P. 80.] How all occasions. iv, 4, 32.
[P. 81.] that noble and liberal casuist. Doubtless suggested by Lamb’s description of the old English dramatists as “those noble and liberal casuists.” (Works, ed. Lucas, I, 46.)