From the beginning of Act II., on to where I would place the end of Act
III., there is continuity.]
[Footnote 8: I would have this speech uttered with pauses and growing urgency, mingled at length with displeasure.]
[Footnote 9: She is faithful to her son, declaring him mad, and attributing the death of 'the unseen' Polonius to his madness.]
[Footnote 10: This passage, like the rest, I hold to be omitted by Shakspere himself. It represents Hamlet as divining the plot with whose execution his false friends were entrusted. The Poet had at first intended Hamlet to go on board the vessel with a design formed upon this for the out-witting of his companions, and to work out that design. Afterwards, however, he alters his plan, and represents his escape as more plainly providential: probably he did not see how to manage it by any scheme of Hamlet so well as by the attack of a pirate; possibly he wished to write the passage (246) in which Hamlet, so consistently with his character, attributes his return to the divine shaping of the end rough-hewn by himself. He had designs—'dear plots'—but they were other than fell out—a rough-hewing that was shaped to a different end. The discomfiture of his enemies was not such as he had designed: it was brought about by no previous plot, but through a discovery. At the same time his deliverance was not effected by the fingering of the packet, but by the attack of the pirate: even the re-writing of the commission did nothing towards his deliverance, resulted only in the punishment of his traitorous companions. In revising the Quarto, the Poet sees that the passage before us, in which is expressed the strongest suspicion of his companions, with a determination to outwit and punish them, is inconsistent with the representation Hamlet gives afterwards of a restlessness and suspicion newly come upon him, which he attributes to the Divinity.
Neither was it likely he would say so much to his mother while so little sure of her as to warn her, on the ground of danger to herself, against revealing his sanity to the king. As to this, however, the portion omitted might, I grant, be regarded as an aside.]
[Footnote 11: —to be done to him.]
[Footnote 12: Hoised, from verb hoise—still used in Scotland.]
[Footnote 13: a kind of explosive shell, which was fixed to the object meant to be destroyed. Note once more Hamlet's delight in action.]
[Footnote 14: —said to Ros. and Guild.: in plain speech, 'Leave us a little while.']
[Page 182]