[Footnote 1: 'some trick played on me?' Compare K. Lear, act v. sc. 7:
'I am mightily abused.']
[Footnote 2: I incline to the Q. reading here: 'or is it some trick, and no reality in it?']
[Footnote 3: —following the king's suggestion.]
[Footnote 4: Point thus: 'Tis Hamlets Character. 'Naked'!—And, in a
Postscript here, he sayes 'alone'! Can &c.
'Alone'—to allay suspicion of his having brought assistance with him.]
[Footnote 5: Fine flattery—preparing the way for the instigation he is about to commence.]
[Footnote 6: Point thus: '—as how should it be so? how otherwise?—will' &c. The king cannot tell what to think—either how it can be, or how it might be otherwise—for here is Hamlet's own hand!]
[Footnote 7: provided.]
[Footnote 8: A hawk was said to check when it forsook its proper game for some other bird that crossed its flight. The blunder in the Quarto is odd, plainly from manuscript copy, and is not likely to have been set right by any but the author.]
[Footnote 9: 'shall not give the practice'—artifice, cunning attempt, chicane, or trick—but a word not necessarily offensive—'the name it deserves, but call it accident:' 221.]