[Footnote 6: unblunted. Some foils seem to have been made with a button that could be taken—probably screwed off.]
[Footnote 7: Whether practice here means exercise or cunning, I cannot determine. Possibly the king uses the word as once before 216—to be taken as Laertes may please.]
[Footnote 8: In the 1st Q. this proposal also is made by the king.]
[Footnote 9:
'So mortal, yes, a knife being but dipt in it,' or,
'So mortal, did I but dip a knife in it.']
[Footnote 10: To understand this figure, one must be familiar with the behaviour of the wick of a common lamp or tallow candle.]
[Footnote 11: 'nothing keeps always at the same degree of goodness.']
[Footnote 12: A plurisie is just a too-muchness, from plus, pluris—a plethora, not our word pleurisy, from [Greek: pleura]. See notes in Johnson and Steevens.]
[Footnote 13: The sense here requires an s, and the space in the Quarto between the e and the comma gives the probability that a letter has dropt out.]
[Footnote 14: Modern editors seem agreed to substitute the adjective spendthrift: our sole authority has spendthrifts, and by it I hold. The meaning seems this: 'the would changes, the thing is not done, and then the should, the mere acknowledgment of duty, is like the sigh of a spendthrift, who regrets consequences but does not change his way: it eases his conscience for a moment, and so injures him.' There would at the same time be allusion to what was believed concerning sighs: Dr. Johnson says, 'It is a notion very prevalent, that sighs impair the strength, and wear out the animal powers.']