Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;[b 1]
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,[b 2] 70
The oppressor's wrong, the proud[a 1] man's contumely,
The pangs of disprized[a 2][b 3] love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus[b 4] make 75
With a bare bodkin?[b 5] who would fardels[a 3][b 6] bear,
To grunt[b 7] and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveller returns,[b 8] puzzles the will, 80
- ↑ 68, 69 there's . . . life] There's the consideration that makes calamity so long-lived.
- ↑ 70 time] the times, the world, as in King John, V. ii. 12, "a sore of time." But perhaps it may mean time as opposed to eternity.
- ↑ 72. disprized] undervalued, misprised. Troilus and Cressida (Folio text), IV. V. 74: "disprising the knight opposed." The Q despised love is preferred by many editors.
- ↑ 75. quietus] acquittance; the law-term, "quietus est," for the settlement of an account; as in Sonnets, cxxvi. 12.
- ↑ 76. bare bodkin] unsheathed dagger; or bare may mean "mere." Sidney, Arcadia: "I . . . doe defie thee in a mortal affray from the bodkin to the pike upward."
- ↑ 76. fardels] packs, burdens, as in Winter's Tale, IV. iv. 728.
- ↑ 77. grunt] groan. Steevens quotes Turbervile, Ovid Epist. xiv.: "of dying men the grunts." Compare Julius Cæsar IV. i. 22: "To groan and sweat under the business."
- ↑ 80. returns] The Ghost has not crossed the bourn or boundary of death, or returned to mortal life; cock-crow and day-dawn startle him away. Perhaps, however, Hamlet at the present time, doubtful as to whether the devil may not have been abusing him (close of Act II.), will not let the apparition enter into his calculations.
as in Tempest, I. ii. 207. He nowhere uses it in the sense of concentric rings, nor does the New English Dictionary give an example earlier than 1627. The notion that mortal coil means the body, encircling the soul, may be set aside.
