[Footnote 1: In Q. at end of speech.]
[Footnote 2: He humours Hamlet as if he were a child.]
[Footnote 3: Not in Q.]
[Footnote 4: He has sent for Horatio, and is expecting him.]
[Footnote 5: In Q. after next speech.]
[Footnote 6: —repudiating the praise.]
[Footnote 7: To know a man, there is scarce a readier way than to hear him talk of his friend—why he loves, admires, chooses him. The Poet here gives us a wide window into Hamlet. So genuine is his respect for being, so indifferent is he to having, that he does not shrink, in argument for his own truth, from reminding his friend to his face that, being a poor man, nothing is to be gained from him—nay, from telling him that it is through his poverty he has learned to admire him, as a man of courage, temper, contentment, and independence, with nothing but his good spirits for an income—a man whose manhood is dominant both over his senses and over his fortune—a true Stoic. He describes an ideal man, then clasps the ideal to his bosom as his own, in the person of his friend. Only a great man could so worship another, choosing him for such qualities; and hereby Shakspere shows us his Hamlet—a brave, noble, wise, pure man, beset by circumstances the most adverse conceivable. That Hamlet had not misapprehended Horatio becomes evident in the last scene of all. 272.]
[Footnote 8: The mother of flattery is self-advantage.]
[Footnote 9: sugared. 1st Q.:
Let flattery sit on those time-pleasing tongs;
To glose with them that loues to heare their praise;
And not with such as thou Horatio.
There is a play to night, &c.]