[Footnote 3: Note such a half line frequently after the not uncommon closing couplet—as if to take off the formality of the couplet, and lead back, through the more speech-like, to greater verisimilitude.]
[Footnote 4: Here the servant goes, and the rest of the speech Horatio speaks solus. He had expected to hear from Hamlet.]
[Footnote 5: 'and it please'—if it please. An for if is merely and.]
[Footnote 6: 'I am told.']
[Footnote 7: Not in Q.]
[Footnote 8: This gives an approximate clue to the time between the second and third acts: it needs not have been a week.]
[Footnote 9: Note once more the unfailing readiness of Hamlet where there was no question as to the fitness of the action seemingly required. This is the man who by too much thinking, forsooth, has rendered himself incapable of action!—so far ahead of the foremost behind him, that, when the pirate, not liking such close quarters, 'on the instant got clear,' he is the only one on her deck! There was no question here as to what ought to be done: the pirate grappled them; he boarded her. Thereafter, with his prompt faculty for dealing with men, he soon comes to an understanding with his captors, and they agree, upon some certain condition, to put him on shore.
He writes in unusual spirits; for he has now gained full, presentable, and indisputable proof of the treachery which before he scarcely doubted, but could not demonstrate. The present instance of it has to do with himself, not his father, but in itself would justify the slaying of his uncle, whose plausible way had possibly perplexed him so that he could not thoroughly believe him the villain he was: bad as he must be, could he actually have killed his own brother, and such a brother? A better man than Laertes might have acted more promptly than Hamlet, and so happened to do right; but he would not have been right, for the proof was not sufficient.]
[Footnote 10: The value Hamlet sets on his discovery, evident in his joyous urgency to share it with his friend, is explicable only on the ground of the relief it is to his mind to be now at length quite certain of his duty.]
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