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SC. II.]
PRINCE OF DENMARK
115
Ham. O God, your only jig-maker.[b 1] What should
a man do but be merry? for, look you, how
cheerfully my mother looks, and my father 135
died within's[a 1][b 2] two hours.
Oph. Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord.
Ham. So long? Nay then, let the devil wear black,
for I'll have a suit of sables.[b 3] O heavens! die
two months ago, and not forgotten yet? 140
Then there's hope a great man's memory may
outlive his life half a year; but, by'r lady, he
must build churches then; or else shall he
suffer not thinking on,[b 4] with the hobby-horse,[b 5]
whose epitaph is "For, O! for, O! the 145
hobby-horse is forgot."
Hautboys play. The dumb-show[b 6] enters.
- ↑ 136. within's] Q, F; within these Q 1.
- ↑ 133. jig-maker] see II. ii. 531.
- ↑ 136. within's] within this.
- ↑ 139. sables] Warburton read, "'fore I'll have a suit of sable." Johnson observed that the fur of sables is not black; a suit trimmed with sables was magnificent, and not a mourning garment. Hudson adopts a suggestion of Wightwick, and reads sabell, flame-colour. But Hamlet's jest lies in the ambiguity of the word; sables, the fur and sable, the black of heraldry. See IV. vii. 81, whence it appears that sables were the livery of "settled age." What an age since my father died! I am quite an old gentleman! (with an ambiguity of apparent self-contradiction in Hamlet's manner, on the meaning black); I mean to be rich and comfortable, and the devil must be the only personage who always wears black, his accustomed garb.
- ↑ 144. suffer not thinking on] undergo oblivion.
- ↑ 144. hobby-horse] a figure of May-games and morris-dances, the figure of a horse strapped round the actor's waist, his feet being concealed by a foot-cloth. "The hobby-horse is forgot" occurs in Love's Labour's Lost, III. i. 30, and in several Elizabethan dramas. Probably the Puritans had for a time succeeded in banishing him from May sports. See Beaumont and Fletcher, Women Pleased, IV. i., for an amusing scene of Puritan versus hobby-horse.
- ↑ 146. dumb-show] The description of the dumb-show here varies only in unessential points from that of F. In Q the differences are not important. But Q 1 deserves to be quoted: "Enter in a Dumbe Shew, the King and the Queene, he sits down in an Arbor, she leaves him: Then enters
