Page:Hamlet - The Arden Shakespeare - 1899.djvu/76

Ghost. So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.

Ham. What?

Ghost. I am thy father's spirit;
Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night, 10
And for the day confined to fast in^{[b 1]} fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word 15
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted^{[a 1]} and combined locks to part
And each particular hair to stand an end,^{[a 2][b 2]}
Like quills upon the fretful^{[a 3]} porpentine:^{[b 3]} 20
But this eternal blazon^{[b 4]} must not be
To ears of flesh and blood. List, list,^{[a 4]} O, list!
If thou didst ever thy dear father love—^{[a 5]}

Ham. O God!^{[a 6]}

1. 18. knotted] Q 1, Q; knotty F.
2. 19. an end] on end Q 1 and many editors.
3. 20. fretful] Q 1, F; fearefull Q.
4. 22. List, list,] Q, list Hamlet F.
5. 23. love—] Rowe; love. Q, F.
6. 24. God!] Q, Heaven F.

1. 11. to fast in] Chaucer, Persones Tale, writes: "And moreover the miseise of helle shal been in defaute of mete and drinke" (Skeat's ed. IV. 577). In Dekker his Dreame (1620) one of the souls burning in hell roars for "cookes to give him meate." Theobald conjectured "confined fast"; Warburton read "too fast in"; Heath proposed "to lasting" ; Steevens "to waste in."
2. 19. an end] So in 2 Henry VI, III. ii. 318: "Mine hair be fix'd an end" F ("on end" Qq).
3. 20. porpentine] porcupine, as in Comedy of Errors III. i. 116. "Porcupine," given here by many editors, first appeared in Q 1676.
4. 21. eternal blazon] promulgation of eternity. But "eternal" was used by Shakespeare as an adjective expressing abnorrence—"eternal devil," Julius Cæsar, I. ii. 160; "eternal villain," Othello, IV. ii. 130; possibly it has a like sense here.