hat you attend him in the hall,
he sends to know if your pleasure hold to play with _Laertes_, or that
you will take longer time?[17]

_Ham_. I am constant to my purposes, they followe the Kings pleasure,
if his fitnes speakes, mine is ready[18]: now or whensoeuer, prouided I
be so able as now.

_Lord_. The King, and Queene, and all are comming downe.

_Ham_. In happy time.[19]

_Lord_. The Queene desires you to vse some gentle
entertainment[20] _Laertes_, before you fall to play.

_Ham_. Shee well instructs me.]

[Footnote 1: 'Well, he _is_ a young one!']

[Footnote 2: '_Com'ply_,' with accent on first syllable: _comply with_
means _pay compliments to, compliment_. See _Q._ reading: 'A did sir
with':--_sir_ here is a verb--_sir with_ means _say sir to_: 'he
_sirred, complied_ with his nurse's breast before &c.' Hamlet speaks in
mockery of the affected court-modes of speech and address, the fashion
of euphuism--a mechanical attempt at the poetic.]

[Footnote 3: _a flock of birds_--suggested by '_This Lapwing_.']

[Footnote 4: 'the mere mode.']

[Footnote 5: 'and external custom of intercourse.' But here too I rather
take the _Q._ to be right: 'They have only got the fashion of the time;
and, out of a habit of wordy conflict, (they have got) a collection of
tricks of speech,--a yesty, frothy mass, with nothing in it, which
carries them in triumph through the most foolish and fastidious (nice,
choice, punctilious, whimsical) judgments.' _Yesty_ I take to be right,
and _prophane_ (vulgar) to have been altered by the Poet to _fond_
(foolish); of _trennowed_ I can make nothing beyond a misprint.]

[Footnote 6: Hamlet had just blown Osricke to his trial in his chosen
kind, and the bubble had burst. The braggart gentleman had no faculty to
generate after the dominant fashion, no invention to support his
ambition--had but a yesty collection, which failing him the moment
something unconventional was wanted, the fool had to look a discovered
fool.]

[Footnote 7: 'I shall win by the odds allowed me; he will not exceed me
three hits.']

[Footnote 8: He has a presentiment of what is coming.]

[Footnote 9: Nothing in this world is of much consequence to him now.
Also, he believes in 'a special Providence.']

[Footnote 10: 'a yielding, a sinking' at the heart? The _Sh. Lex._ says
_misgiving_.]

[Footnote 11: 'obey the warning.']

[Footnote 12: 'go to them before they come here'--'_prevent_ their
coming.']

[Fo