Than that which dearest father bears his son
Do I impart[b 1] toward[a 1] you. For your intent
In going back to school in Wittenberg,[a 2][b 2]
It is most retrograde[b 3] to our desire;
And we beseech you, bend you to remain 115
Here in the cheer and comfort of our eye,
Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.
Queen. Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet:
I pray thee,[a 3] stay with us; go not to Wittenberg.
Ham. I shall in all my best obey you, madam.[a 4] 120
King. Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply:
Be as ourself in Denmark. Madam, come;
This gentle and unforced accord of Hamlet
Sits smiling to my heart; in grace whereof,
No jocund health that Denmark drinks to-day, 125
But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell,
And the king's rouse[b 4] the heavens[a 5] shall bruit[b 5] again,
- ↑ 112. impart] The verb has no object; perhaps it is a confused construction; possibly it is a case of the absorption of "it" by the "t" of "impart." To obtain an object Badham suggests the reading "nobility no less" in line 110. Johnson explains "impart" as impart myself.
- ↑ 113. Wittenberg] The university was founded in 1502; Luther had made it famous. In The Tragedy of Hoffman (1602), the foolish Ierom says, "I am not foole, I have bin to Wittenberg, where wit growes." Shakespeare may have heard of it in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, and in Nash's Life of Iacke Wilton, 1594. It must be remembered that for Hamlet Wittenberg was a foreign university, to which he might go at any age, after his earlier education had been completed.
- ↑ 114. retrograde] Prof. Hales notes in Chapman's May-Day (vol. ii. p. 373, ed. 1873): "Be not retrograde to our desires." Originally an astrological term. See All's Well, I. i.2 12.
- ↑ 127. rouse] bumper, as in I. iv. 8, and Othello, II. iii. 66; Swedish ras, drunkenness. Dekker, in The Gul's Horn-Booke, Prosemium, enumerating national drinking customs, mentions "the Danish Rowsa."
- ↑ 127. bruit] noise abroad, as in Macbeth, V. vii. 22.
