Ham. Why, what should be the feare?
I doe not set my life at a pins fee;
And for my Soule, what can it doe to that?
Being a thing immortall as it selfe:[10]
It waues me forth againe; Ile follow it.
Hor. What if it tempt you toward the Floud my Lord?[11]
[Footnote 1: —that of his father, so moving him to question it. Questionable does not mean doubtful, but fit to be questioned.]
[Footnote 2: 'I'll call thee'—for the nonce.]
[Footnote 3: I think hearse was originally the bier—French herse, a harrow—but came to be applied to the coffin: hearsed in death—coffined in death.]
[Footnote 4: There is no impropriety in the use of the word inurned. It is a figure—a word once-removed in its application: the sepulchre is the urn, the body the ashes. Interred Shakspere had concluded incorrect, for the body was not laid in the earth.]
[Footnote 5: So in 1st Q.]
[Footnote 6: 'fooles of Nature'—fools in the presence of her knowledge—to us no knowledge—of her action, to us inexplicable. A fact that looks unreasonable makes one feel like a fool. See Psalm lxxiii. 22: 'So foolish was I and ignorant, I was as a beast before thee.' As some men are our fools, we are all Nature's fools; we are so far from knowing anything as it is.]
[Footnote 7: Even if Shakspere cared more about grammar than he does, a man in Hamlet's perturbation he might well present as making a breach in it; but we are not reduced even to justification. Toschaken (to as German zu intensive) is a recognized English word; it means to shake to pieces. The construction of the passage is, 'What may this mean, that thou revisitest thus the glimpses of the moon, and that we so horridly to-shake our disposition?' So in The Merry Wives,
And fairy-like to-pinch the unclean knight.