[Footnote 2: The love of talk makes a man use many idle words, foolish expressions, and useless repetitions.]
[Footnote 3: Notwithstanding the parenthesis, I take 'Mistris' to be the objective to 'bespeake'—that is, address.]
[Footnote 4: Star, mark of sort or quality; brand (45). The 1st Q. goes on—
An'd one that is vnequall for your loue:
But it may mean, as suggested by my Reader, 'outside thy destiny,'—as ruled by the star of nativity—and I think it does.]
[Footnote 5: Here is a change from the impression conveyed in the first act: he attributes his interference to his care for what befitted royalty; whereas, talking to Ophelia (40, 72), he attributes it entirely to his care for her;—so partly in the speech correspondent to the present in 1st Q.:—
Now since which time, seeing his loue thus cross'd,
Which I tooke to be idle, and but sport,
He straitway grew into a melancholy,]
[Footnote 6: See also passage in note from 1st Q.]
[Footnote 7: She obeyed him. The 'fruits' of his advice were her conformed actions.]
[Footnote 8: When the appetite goes, and the sleep follows, doubtless the man is on the steep slope of madness. But as to Hamlet, and how matters were with him, what Polonius says is worth nothing.]