_. 44, 68]

[Footnote 2: A soliloquy is as the drawing called a section of a thing:
it shows the inside of the man. Soliloquy is only rare, not unnatural,
and in art serves to reveal more of nature. In the drama it is the
lifting of a veil through which dialogue passes. The scene is for the
moment shifted into the lonely spiritual world, and here we begin to
know Hamlet. Such is his wretchedness, both in mind and circumstance,
that he could well wish to vanish from the world. The suggestion of
suicide, however, he dismisses at once--with a momentary regret, it is
true--but he dismisses it--as against the will of God to whom he appeals
in his misery. The cause of his misery is now made plain to us--his
trouble that passes show, deprives life of its interest, and renders the
world a disgust to him. There is no lamentation over his father's death,
so dwelt upon by the king; for loving grief does not crush. Far less
could his uncle's sharp practice, in scheming for his own election
during Hamlet's absence, have wrought in a philosopher like him such an
effect. The one makes him sorrowful, the other might well annoy him, but
neither could render him unhappy: his misery lies at his mother's door;
it is her conduct that has put out the light of her son's life. She who
had been to him the type of all excellence, she whom his father had
idolized, has within a month of his death married his uncle, and is
living in habitual incest--for as such, a marriage of the kind was then
unanimously regarded. To Hamlet's condition and behaviour, his mother,
her past and her present, is the only and sufficing key. His very idea
of unity had been rent in twain.]

[Footnote 3: _1st Q_. 'too much grieu'd and sallied flesh.' _Sallied_,
sullied: compare _sallets_, 67, 103. I have a strong suspicion that
_sallied_ and not _solid_ is the true word. It comes nearer the depth of
Hamlet's mood.]

[Footnote 4: Two months at the present moment.]

[Footnote 5: This is the word all the editors take: which is right, I do
not know; I doubt if either is. The word in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_,
act i. sc. 1--

Belike for want of rain; which I could well
Beteem them from the tempest of mine eyes--

I cannot believe the same word. The latter means _produce for_, as from
the place of origin. The word, in the sense necessary to this passage,
is not, so far as I know, to be found anywhere else. I have no
suggestion to make.]

[Footnote 6: From his