[Footnote 4: Point thus: 'too light. For the law of Writ, and the Liberty, these are the onely men':—either for written plays, that is, or for those in which the players extemporized their speeches.
1st Q. 'For the law hath writ those are the onely men.']
[Footnote 5: Polonius would lead him on to talk of his daughter.]
[Footnote 6: These are lines of the first stanza of an old ballad still in existence. Does Hamlet suggest that as Jephthah so Polonius had sacrificed his daughter? Or is he only desirous of making him talk about her?]
[Footnote 7: 'That is not as the ballad goes.']
[Footnote 8: That this is a corruption of the pious in the Quarto, is made clearer from the 1st Quarto: 'the first verse of the godly Ballet wil tel you all.']
[Footnote 9: abridgment—that which abridges, or cuts short. His
'Abridgements' were the Players.]
[Footnote 10: 1st Q. 'Vallanced'—with a beard, that is. Both readings may be correct.]
[Footnote 11: A boy of course: no women had yet appeared on the stage.]
[Footnote 12: A Venetian boot, stilted, sometimes very high.]