helia_, what's the matter?

_Ophe_. Alas my Lord, I haue beene so affrighted.
[Sidenote: O my Lord, my Lord,]

_Polon_. With what, in the name of Heauen?
[Sidenote: i'th name of God?]

_Ophe_. My Lord, as I was sowing in my Chamber, [Sidenote: closset,]
Lord _Hamlet_ with his doublet all vnbrac'd,[5]
No hat vpon his head, his stockings foul'd,
Vngartred, and downe giued[6] to his Anckle,
Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,
And with a looke so pitious in purport,
As if he had been loosed out of hell,

[Footnote 1: of far reaching mind.]

[Footnote 2: The word windlaces is explained in the dictionaries as
_shifts, subtleties_--but apparently on the sole authority of this
passage. There must be a figure in _windlesses_, as well as in _assaies
of Bias_, which is a phrase plain enough to bowlers: the trying of other
directions than that of the _jack_, in the endeavour to come at one with
the law of the bowl's bias. I find _wanlass_ a term in hunting: it had
to do with driving game to a given point--whether in part by getting to
windward of it, I cannot tell. The word may come of the verb wind, from
its meaning '_to manage by shifts or expedients_': _Barclay_. As he has
spoken of fishing, could the _windlesses_ refer to any little instrument
such as now used upon a fishing-rod? I do not think it. And how do the
words _windlesses_ and _indirections_ come together? Was a windless some
contrivance for determining how the wind blew? I bethink me that a thin
withered straw is in Scotland called a _windlestrae_: perhaps such
straws were thrown up to find out 'by indirection' the direction of the
wind.

The press-reader sends me two valuable quotations, through Latham's
edition of Johnson's Dictionary, from Dr. H. Hammond (1605-1660), in
which _windlass_ is used as a verb:--

'A skilful woodsman, by windlassing, presently gets a shoot, which,
without taking a compass, and thereby a commodious stand, he could never
have obtained.'

'She is not so much at leasure as to windlace, or use craft, to satisfy
them.'

To _windlace_ seems then to mean 'to steal along to leeward;' would it
be absurd to suggest that, so-doing, the hunter _laces the wind_?
Shakspere, with many another, I fancy, speaks of _threading the night_
or _the darkness_.

Johnson explains the word in the text as 'A handle by which anything is
turned.']

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