Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced;[b 1]
No hat upon his head; his stockings foul'd,
Ungarter'd,[b 2] and down-gyved[b 3] to his ancle; 80
Pale as his shirt; his knees knocking each other;
And with a look so piteous in purport[b 4]
As if he had been loosed out of hell
To speak of horrors, he comes before me.
Pol. Mad for thy love?
Oph. My lord, I do not know, 85
But truly I do fear it.
Pol. What said he?
Oph. He took me by the wrist and held me hard;[a 1]
Then goes he to the length of all his arm,
And, with his other hand thus o'er his brow,
He falls to such perusal[b 5] of my face 90
As he would draw it. Long stay'd he so;
At last, a little shaking of mine arm,
And thrice his head thus waving up and down,
He raised a sigh so piteous[a 2] and profound
That[a 3] it did seem to shatter all his bulk[b 6] 95
And end his being; that done, he lets me go,
And with his head over his shoulder[a 4] turn'd
He seem'd to find his way without his eyes;
- ↑ 78. unbraced] unfastened, as in Julius Cæsar, I. iii. 48.
- ↑ 80. Ungarter'd] See the conventional lover described in As You Like It, III. ii. 398.
- ↑ 80. down-gyved] fallen to the ancle, like gyves or fetters. Theobald read, with Qq 4, 5, down-gyred, explaining it "rolled down to the ancle."
- ↑ 82. purport] Clar. Press says accented on last syllable. But no other example of the word occurs in Shakespeare.
- ↑ 90. perusal] study. See peruse, IV. vii. 137.
- ↑ 91. Long] Pope read Long time. 95. bulk] frame. Florio (1611) has "Pettorata, a shock against the breast or bulk." See Rape of Lucrece, 467: "her heart . . . beating her bulk."
