Page:Hamlet - The Arden Shakespeare - 1899.djvu/132

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind^{[b 1]} to suffer
The slings and arrows^{[b 2]} of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea^{[b 3]} of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die,—to sleep,— 60
No^{[a 1]} more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,^{[a 2]} 'tis a consummation^{[b 4]}
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die;—to sleep;—
To sleep!^{[a 3]} perchance to dream! ay, there's the rub;^{[b 5]} 65
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,^{[b 6]}

1. 60, 61. To die,— . . . No] Pope, die to sleepe No Q, dye, to sleepe No F.
2. 63. to,] too; Q, too? F.
3. 64, 65. die;—to sleep;—To sleep!] Capell, die to sleepe, To sleepe, Q, F.

Hunter, who would place the soliloquy, with Q 1, in Act II. sc. ii. supposes it is suggested by the book which Hamlet is there represented as reading. Perhaps, the explanation lying in what immediately follows, it means, Is my present project of active resistance agamst wrong to be, or not to be? Hamlet anticipates his own death as a probable consequence.

1. 57. in the mind] This is to be connected with "suffer," not with "nobler."
2. 58. slings and arrows] Walker, with an anonymous writer of 1752, would read "stings." "Slings and arrows" is found in Fletcher's Valentinian, I. iii.
3. 59. sea] Various emendations have been suggested: Theobald, "siege"; also, "th' assay" or "a 'say"; Hanmer, "assailing"; Warburton, "assail of"; Bailey, "the seat." It has been shown from Aristotle, Strabo, Ælian, and Nicolas of Damascus that the Kelts, Gauls, and Cimbri exhibited their intrepidity by armed combats with the sea, which Shakespeare might have found in Abraham Fleming's translation of Ælian, 1576. But elsewhere Shakespeare has "sea of joys," "sea of glory," "sea of care," Here the central metaphor is that of a battle ("slings and arrows"); the "sea of troubles," billows of the war, merely develops the metaphor of battle, as in Scott, Marmion, VI. xxvi.:
   "Then mark'd they, dashing broad and far,
   The broken billows of the war,
   And plumed crests pf chieftains brave,
   Floating like foam upon the wave."
4. 63. consummation] Compare Cymbeline, IV. ii. 280:
   "Quiet consummation have:
   And renowned be thy grave!"
5. 65. rub] impediment, as in King Henry V, II. ii. 188.
6. 67. mortal coil] trouble or turmoil of mortal life. In this sense coil occurs several times in Shakespeare,