[Sidenote: to heare a]
Fellow, teare a Passion to tatters, to [Sidenote: totters,]
verie ragges, to split the eares of the Groundlings:[12]
[Sidenote: spleet]
who (for the most part) are capeable[13] of nothing,
but inexplicable dumbe shewes,[14] and noise:[15] I
could haue such a Fellow whipt for o're-doing [Sidenote: would]

[Footnote 1: 'something of settled matter'--_idee fixe_.]

[Footnote 2: '_away from_ his own true likeness'; 'makes him so unlike
himself.']

[Footnote 3: Polonius is crestfallen, but positive.]

[Footnote 4: This supports the notion of Ophelia's ignorance of the
espial. Polonius thinks she is about to disclose what has passed, and
_informs_ her of its needlessness. But it _might_ well enough be taken
as only an assurance of the success of their listening--that they had
heard without difficulty.]

[Footnote 5: 'If she do not find him out': a comparable phrase, common
at the time, was, _Take me with you_, meaning, _Let me understand you_.

Polonius, for his daughter's sake, and his own in her, begs for him
another chance.]

[Footnote 6: 'in the insignificant, madness may roam the country, but in
the great it must be watched.' The _unmatcht_ of the _Quarto_ might bear
the meaning of _countermatched_.]

[Footnote 7: I should suggest this exhortation to the Players introduced
with the express purpose of showing how absolutely sane Hamlet was,
could I believe that Shakspere saw the least danger of Hamlet's pretence
being mistaken for reality.]

[Footnote 8: He would have neither blundering nor emphasis such as might
rouse too soon the king's suspicion, or turn it into certainty.]

[Footnote 9: 'liue'--_lief_]

[Footnote 10: 1st Q.:--

I'de rather heare a towne bull bellow,
Then such a fellow speake my lines.

_Lines_ is a player-word still.]

[Footnote 11: --smoothness such as belongs to the domain of Art, and
will both save from absurdity, and allow the relations with surroundings
to manifest themselves;--harmoniousness, which is the possibility of
co-existence.]

[Footnote 12: those on the ground--that is, in the pit; there was no
gallery then.]

[Footnote 13: _receptive_.]

[Footnote 14: --gestures extravagant and unintelligible as those of a
dumb show that could not by the beholder be interpreted; gestures
incorrespondent to the words.

A _dumb sho