[Footnote 2: arm'd is certainly the right, and a true Shaksperean word:—it was no fault in the aim, but in the force of the flight—no matter of the eye, but of the arm, which could not give momentum enough to such slightly timbered arrows. The fault in the construction of the last line, I need not remark upon.
I think there is a hint of this the genuine meaning even in the blundered and partly unintelligible reading of the Quarto. If we leave out 'for so loued,' we have this: 'So that my arrows, too slightly timbered, would have reverted armed to my bow again, but not (would not have gone) where I have aimed them,'—implying that his arrows would have turned their armed heads against himself.
What the king says here is true, but far from the truth: he feared driving Hamlet, and giving him at the same time opportunity, to speak in his own defence and render his reasons.]
[Footnote 3: extremes? or conditions?]
[Footnote 4: 'With many a tempest hadde his berd ben schake.'—Chaucer, of the Schipman, in The Prologue to The Canterbury Tales.]
[Footnote 5: —hear of Hamlet's death in England, he means.
At this point in the 1st Q. comes a scene between Horatio and the queen, in which he informs her of a letter he had just received from Hamlet,
Whereas he writes how he escap't the danger,
And subtle treason that the king had plotted,
Being crossed by the contention of the windes,
He found the Packet &c.
Horatio does not mention the pirates, but speaks of Hamlet 'being set ashore,' and of Gilderstone and Rossencraft going on to their fate. The queen assures Horatio that she is but temporizing with the king, and shows herself anxious for the success of her son's design against his life. The Poet's intent was not yet clear to himself.]
[Footnote 6: Here his crow cracks.]