Page:Hamlet - The Arden Shakespeare - 1899.djvu/115

with you in this^{[a 1]} garb, lest my^{[a 2]} extent^{[b 1]} to the 395
players, which, I tell you, must show fairly
outwards,^{[a 3]} should more appear like entertainment
than yours. You are welcome; but my
uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived.

Guil. In what, my dear lord? 400

Ham. I am but mad north-north-west; when the
wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a
handsaw.^{[b 2]}

Re-enter Polonius.

Pol. Well be with you, gentlemen!

Ham. Hark you, Guildenstern;—and you too;—at 405
each ear a hearer: that great baby you see
there is^{[a 4]} not yet out of his swaddling-clouts.^{[a 5]}

1. 395. this] Q, the F.
2. 395. lest my] F, Q 6; let me Qq 2, 3; let my Qq 4, 5.
3. 397. outwards] Q, outward F.
4. 406, 407. you see there is] as you see is Qq 4–6.
5. 407. swaddling] Q, swathing F.

1. 395. extent] behaviour, deportment, as in Twelfth Night, IV. i. 57. Collier proposed ostent.
2. 401–403. I am . . . handsaw] I am mad only in one point of the compass. T. Bright, in A Treatise of Melancholy (1586), mentions the south and south-east winds as the most suitable for sufferers from melancholy (chap, xxxix. ). Burton gives other opinions. A southerly wind would, according to Bright, favour Hamlet's sanity. North and north-west, we may infer, would be the most unfavourable. The word hawk was and is used for a plasterer's tool, but no example has been found earlier than 1700. Hack, however, is an Elizabethan name for a tool for breaking or chopping up, and for agricultural tools of the mattock, hoe, and pickaxe type New Eng. Dict.). Handsaw might suggest hack, for we the find in 1 Henry IV, II. iv. 187, "My sword hackt like a hand-saw." It is, however, generally assumed that "handsaw here is a corruption of heronshaw or hernsew; "no other instances of the phrase (except as quotations from Shakespeare) have been found" (New Eng. Dict.). J. C. Heath (quoted in Clar. Press) explains: the heron flying down the north wind is ill seen, the spectator looking south towards the sun; flying north, on a south wind, it can be easily distinguished from the hawk. Does Hamlet imagine the two courtiers as hawks loosed to pursue him? Elsewhere he compares them to hunters driving him unto the toils. The Gentleman's Recreation gives directions for the pursuit of a hern by a pair of hawks. The south wind is generally represented by Shakespeare as a wind of evil contagion. Does Hamlet mean that he can recognise King's birds of chase flying on an ill wind?