[Footnote 8: So also in 1st Q.]
[Footnote 9: —reading, or pretending to read, the words from the book he carries.]
[Footnote 10: When the passion for emendation takes possession of a man, his opportunities are endless—so many seeming emendations offer themselves which are in themselves not bad, letters and words affording as much play as the keys of a piano. 'Being a god kissing carrion,' is in itself good enough; but Shakspere meant what stands in both Quarto and Folio: the dead dog being a carrion good at kissing. The arbitrary changes of the editors are amazing.]
[Footnote 11: He cannot help his mind constantly turning upon women; and if his thoughts of them are often cruelly false, it is not Hamlet but his mother who is to blame: her conduct has hurled him from the peak of optimism into the bottomless pool of pessimistic doubt, above the foul waters of which he keeps struggling to lift his head.]
[Page 86]
Ham. Let her not walke i'th'Sunne: Conception[1] is a blessing, but not as your daughter may [Sidenote: but as your] conceiue. Friend looke too't.
[Sidenote: 100] Pol.[2] How say you by that? Still harping on my daughter: yet he knew me not at first; he said [Sidenote: a sayd I] I was a Fishmonger: he is farre gone, farre gone: [Sidenote: Fishmonger, a is farre gone, and truly] and truly in my youth, I suffred much extreamity and truly for loue: very neere this. Ile speake to him againe.
What do you read my Lord?
Ham. Words, words, words.
Pol. What is the matter, my Lord?