[Footnote 7: '—so you have not much time.']
[Footnote 8: 'True, it will be short, but till then is mine, and will be long enough for me.' He is resolved.]
[Footnote 9: Now that he is assured of what is right, the Shadow that waits him on the path to it, has no terror for him. He ceases to be anxious as to 'what dreams may come,' as to the 'something after death,' as to 'the undiscovered country,' the moment his conscience is satisfied. 120. It cannot now make a coward of him. It was never in regard to the past that Hamlet dreaded death, but in regard to the righteousness of the action which was about to occasion his death. Note that he expects death; at least he has long made up his mind to the great risk of it—the death referred to in the soliloquy—which, after all, was not that which did overtake him. There is nothing about suicide here, nor was there there.]
[Footnote 10: 'a man's life must soon be over anyhow.']
[Footnote 11: The approach of death causes him to think of and regret even the small wrongs he has done; he laments his late behaviour to Laertes, and makes excuse for him: the similarity of their condition, each having lost a father by violence, ought, he says, to have taught him gentleness with him. The 1st Quarto is worth comparing here:—
Enter Hamlet and Horatio
Ham. Beleeue mee, it greeues mee much Horatio,
That to Leartes I forgot my selfe:
For by my selfe me thinkes I feele his griefe,
Though there's a difference in each others wrong.]
[Footnote 12: 'I will not forget,' or, 'I will call to mind, what merits he has,' or 'what favours he has shown me.' But I suspect the word 'count' ought to be court.—He does court his favour when next they meet—in lovely fashion. He has no suspicion of his enmity.]
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[Sidenote: 242, 262] But sure the brauery[1] of his griefe did put me
Into a Towring passion.[2]