[Footnote 1: unhappily.]
[Footnote 2: He has hid the body—to make the whole look the work of a mad fit.]
[Footnote 3: This line is not in the Quarto.]
[Footnote 4: Not in Q. See margin above.]
[Footnote 5: He has put it in a place which, little visited, is very dusty.]
[Footnote 6: He is mad to them—sane only to his mother and Horatio.]
[Footnote 7: euphuistic: 'asked a question by a sponge, what answer should a prince make?']
[Footnote 8: 1st Q.:
For hee doth keep you as an Ape doth nuttes,
In the corner of his Iaw, first mouthes you,
Then swallowes you:]
[Footnote 9: Here most modern editors insert, 'so, haply, slander'. But, although I think the Poet left out this obscure passage merely from dissatisfaction with it, I believe it renders a worthy sense as it stands. The antecedent to whose is friends: cannon is nominative to transports; and the only difficulty is the epithet poysned applied to shot, which seems transposed from the idea of an unfriendly whisper. Perhaps Shakspere wrote poysed shot. But taking this as it stands, the passage might be paraphrased thus: 'Whose (favourable) whisper over the world's diameter (from one side of the world to the other), as level (as truly aimed) as the cannon (of an evil whisper) transports its poisoned shot to his blank (the white centre of the target), may shoot past our name (so keeping us clear), and hit only the invulnerable air.' ('the intrenchant air': Macbeth, act v. sc. 8). This interpretation rests on the idea of over-condensation with its tendency to seeming confusion—the only fault I know in the Poet—a grand fault, peculiarly his own, born of the beating of his wings against the impossible. It is much as if, able to think two thoughts at once, he would compel his phrase to utter them at once.]